

iV: 






{>■'.'] 



Jlli'l^liili 



THE AMERICAN NATION 
A HISTORY 

FROM ORIGINAL SOURCES BY ASSOCIATED SCHOLARS 

EDITED BY 

ALBERT BUSHNELL HART, LL.D. 

PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

ADVISED BY 
VARIOUS HISTORICAL SOCIETIES 



Vol. 8 Preliminaries of the Revolution, 
by George Elliott Howard, Ph.D., 
Prof. Polit. Science Univ. of Neb. 

" 9 The American Revolution, by 
Claude Halstead Van Tyne, Ph.D., 
Head Prof. Hist. Univ. of Michigan. 

" 10 The Confederation and the Consti- 
tution, by Andrew Cunningham 
McLaughlin, A.M., Head Prof. 
Hist., Univ. of Chicago. 

Group III 

Development of the Nation 

Vol. II The Federalist System, by John 
Spencer Bassett, Ph.D., Prof. Am. 
Hist., Smith College. 

" 12 The Jeffersonian System, by Ed- 
ward Channing, Ph.D., Prof. An- 
cient and Modem Hist., Harvard 

Univ. 

" 13 Rise of American Nationality, by 
Kendric Charles Babcock, Ph.D., 
Dean Col. Arts and Sciences, Univ. 
of Illinois. 

" 14 Rise of the New West, by Frederick 
Jackson Turner, Ph.D., Prof. Hist., 
Harvard University. 

" 15 Jacksonian Democracy, by William 
MacDonald, LL.D., Prof. Govern- 
ment, Univ. of California. 

Group IV 

Trial of Nationality 

Vol. 16 Slavery and Abolition, by Albert 
Bushnell Hart, LL.D., Prof. Gov- 
ernment, Harvard Univ. 



Vol. 17 Westward Extension, by the late 
George Pierce Garrison, Ph.D., for- 
merly Prof. Hist., Univ. of Texas. 

" 18 Parties and Slavery, by Theodore 
Clarke Smith, Ph.D., Prof. Am. 
Hist., Williams College. 

" 19 Causes of the Civil War, by Rear- 
Admiral French Ensor Chadwick, 
U.S.N. , retired former Pres. of 
Naval War College. 

" 20 The Appeal to Arms, by James 
Kendall Hosmer, LL.D., formerly 
Librarian Minneapolis Pub. Lib. 

" 21 Outcome of the Civil War, by 
James Kendall Hosmer, LL.D. 

Group V 

National Expansion 

Vol. 22 Reconstruction, Political and Eco- 
nomic, by William Archibald Dun- 
ning, Ph.D., Prof. Hist, and Politi- 
cal Philosophy, Columbia Univ. 

" 23 National Development, by Edwin 
Erie Sparks, Ph.D., Pres. Pa. State 
College. 

" 24 National Problems, by Davis R. 
Dewey, Ph.D., Professor of Eco- 
nomics, Mass. Inst, of Technology. 

" 25 America as a World Power, by John 
H. Latan6, Ph.D., Prof. Am. Hist., 
John Hopkins University. 

'* 26 National Ideals Historically Traced, 
byAlbertBushnellHart,LL.p.,ProL 
Government, Harvard University. 

" 27 National Progress — 1907-1917, by 
Frederic Austin Ogg, Ph.D., Prof. 
Political Science, Univ. of Wisconsin. 

" 28 Index to the Series, by David May- 
dole Matteson, A.M., Harvard 
College Library. 



COMMITTEES APPOINTED TO ADVISE AND 
CONSULT WITH THE EDITOR 



The Massachusktts Historical Socibtt 

Charles Francis Adams, LL.D., President 
Samuel A. Green, M.D., Vice-President 
James Ford Rhodes, LL.D., id Vice-President 
Edward Channing, Ph.D., Prof. History Harvard 

Univ. 
Worthington C. Ford, Chief of Division of MSB. 

Library of Congress 

The Wisconsin Historical Society 

Reuben G. Thwaites, LL.D., Secretary and Super- 
intendent 

Frederick J. Turner, Ph.D., Prof, of American His- 
tory Wisconsin University 

James D. Butler, LL.D., formerly Prof. Wisconsin 
University 

William W. Wight, President 

Henry E. Legler, Curator 

The Virginia Historical Society 

William Gordon McCabe, Litt.D , President 

Lyon G. Tyler, LL.D., Pres. of William and Mary 

College 
Judge David C. Richardson 
J. A. C. Chandler, Professor Richmond College 
Edward Wilson James 

The Texas Historical Society 

Judge John Henninger Reagan, President 
George P. Garrison. Ph.D., Prof, of History Uni- 
versity of Tex8« 
Judge C. W. Raines 
Judge Zachary T. FuUmore 







HENRY CLAY 
[From the nriginal life mask bv John Henri Isaac Browere) 



THE AMERICAN NATION : A HISTORY 

VOLUME 14 

RISE OF THE NEW WEST 

1819-1829 



BY 

FREDERICK JACKSON TURNER, Ph.D. 

PROPBSSOR OP AMERICAN HISTORY IN THB UNIVBRSITT 
OF WISCONSIN 



WITH MAPS 




hoi^ 



NEW YORK AND LONDON 
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 







^^c>aa'"\ 



-j^f 



Copyright, 1906, by Harpbr & Bxothbks. 
Printed in the United States of America 

D F 



TO 

THE MEMORY OP 
ANDREW JACKSON TURNER 

MY FATHER 



EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 

IN many previous volumes of the series, the re- 
gion beyond the AUeghanies has been recognized 
as an influence and a potentiality in American 
history. Thwaites, in his France in America, shows 
how the French opened up the coimtry and pre- 
pared the way; the Tennessee and Kentucky set- 
tlements are described in Howard's Preliminaries 
of the Revolution; Van Tyne's American Revolu- 
tion goes into the earliest western governments; 
McLaughlin's Confederation and Constitution deals 
with the organization of the new communities by 
Congress; Bassett's Federalist System and Chan- 
ning's Jejfersonian System show how the diplomacy 
and politics of the country were affected by the 
appearance of a new group of equal states; while 
Babcock's Rise of American Nationality carries the 
influence of those states into a b'roader national 
life. Professor Turner takes up the west as an 
integral part of the Union, with a self-consciousness 
as lively as that of the east or south, with its own 
aims and prejudices, but a partner in the councils 
and the benefits of the national government which, - 
as a whole, it is the aim of this volvune to describe. 



xiv EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 

In a way the west is simply a broader east, for 
up to the end of the period covered by this volume 
most of the grown men and women in the west 
came across the mountains to found new homes — 
the New-Englander in western New York ; the Penn- 
sylvanian diverging westward and southwestward ; 
the Virginian in Kentucky ; the North-Carolinian in 
Tennessee and Missouri and, along with the South- 
Carolinian and Georgian, in the new southwestern 
states ; while north of the Ohio River the principal 
element up to 1830 was southern. 

To describe such a movement and its effects. Pro- 
fessor Turner has the advantage to be a descendant 
of New-Yorkers, of New England stock, but native 
to the west, and living alongside the most complete 
collection of materials upon the west which has ever 
been brought together — the Library of the Wisconsin 
State Historical Society. His point of view is that 
the west and east were always interdependent, and 
that the rising power of the western states in na- 
tional affairs was a wholesome and natural outcome 
of forces at work for half a century. The trans- 
formation of the west from a rude and boisterous 
frontier to a group of states, soon rivalling their 
parent communities in population and we-alth, was 
not unlike the process through which Massachusetts 
and Pennsylvania and Virginia passed as colonies, 
except that the inland people accepted ideals and 
standards originally English, but worked out and 
put into shape by their colonist fathers. 



CONTENTS 

CMAP. PAGB 

Editor's Introduction . xiii 

Author's Preface xvii 

I. Nationalism and Sectionalism (1815-1830) . 3 

II. New England (1820-1830) 10 

III. The Middle Region (1820-1830) 28 

IV. The South (1820-1830) 45 

V. Colonization of the West (1820-1830) . . 67 

VI. Social and Economic Development of the 

West (1820-1830) 84 

VII. Western Commerce and Ideals (1820- 

1830) 96 

VIII. The Far West (1820-1830) iii 

IX. The Crisis of 1819 and Its Results (1819- 

1820) 134 

X. The Missouri Compromise (1819-1821) . . . 149 

XI. Party Politics (1820-1822) 172 

XII. The Monroe Doctrine (1821-1823). . . . 199 

XIII. Internal Improvements (1818-1824) . . . 224 

XIV. The Tariff of 1824 (1820-1824) 236 

XV. The Election of 1824 (1822-1825) .... 245 

XVI. President Adams and the Opposition (1825- 

1827) 26s 



xii CONTENTS 

CBAP. PAOI 

XVII. Internal Improvements and Foreign Trade 

(1825-1829) 286 

XVIII. Reaction Towards State Sovereignty 

(1816-1829) 299 

XIX. The Tariff of Abominations and the South 

Carolina Exposition (1827-1828) . . . 314 

XX. Critical Essay on Authorities 333 

Index 353 



MAPS 

United States (182 i) (in colors) facing 6 

Distribution of Population (1820) 
Distribution of Population (1830) 
Western Indians' Trading Posts and Routes 

OF Travel (1820-1835) (in colors) ... " 114 
Russian Settlements and Claims (1775-1867) " 208 
Highways and Waterways in the United 

States (1826-1830) {in colors) " 226 

House Vote on Survey Bill (1824). ... " 232 

House Vote on Tariff Bill (1824) ) „ 

> . , . 242 

House Vote on Tariff Bill (1828) ) 

Presidential Election of 1824 ) "6 

Presidential Election of 1825 ) 

Cessions of Indian Lands (1816-1830) (in 

colors) " 310 



I . . . " 70 



EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION xv 

As the volume treats of the nation, and not 
simply of any section, it contains three chapters 
(i., ii., iii.) on the social and political life in New 
England, the middle region, and the south. The 
next four chapters are a systematic account of the 
west as the settler and the traveller saw it be- 
tween 1820 and 1830. In chapter v., on Coloniza- 
tion, the settlers are traced from their old homes 
to their new ones by road and river. Chapter vi., 
on Social and Economic Development, is a pict- 
ure of frontier life in the forest and on the farm; 
chapter vii. brings into relief the need of a market 
and the difficulty of reaching tide-water with west- 
em products — a subject taken up again in the two 
later chapters on internal improvements; chapter 
viii., on The Far West, goes with the trapper into the 
moimtains and then across the continent to Cali- 
fornia and to Oregon, which were included in the 
ambitions of the buoyant westerner. 

Chapters ix. to xi. are a narrative of a succession 
of national questions involving all sections — the 
commercial crisis of 18 19; the Missouri Compro- 
mise, which was in good part a western question; 
and the slow recrystallization of political parties 
after 1820. Chapter xii. is on the Monroe Doctrine, 
which included eastern questions of commerce, 
southern questions of nearness to Cuba, and west- 
em questions of Latin-American neighbors. Chap- 
ters xiii. and xvii. describe the efforts by internal 
improvements to help all the states, and especially 



xvi EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 

to bind the eastern and western groups together 
by the Cumberland Road and by canals. Chap- 
ters xiv. to xvi. take up the tariff of 1824, the 
presidential election of that year, and its political 
results. Chapter xviii. brings into clear light the 
causes for the reaction from the ardent nationalism 
described in Babcock's American Nationality. With 
chapter xix., on the tariff of 1828 and the South 
Carolina protest, the narrative part of the volume 
closes. The Critical Essay on Authorities and a 
wealth of foot-notes carry the reader back to 
materials little studied hitherto, and prepare the 
way for many detailed investigations. 

The aim of the volume is not to show the Rise 
of the New West as though it were a separate story, 
but to show how the nation found itself in the 
midst of questions involving the west, and how all 
parts of the Union were enriched and stimulated by 
the appearance of a new section. It opens up new 
vistas of historical study. 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE 

IN the present volume I have kept before myself 
the importance of regarding American develop- 
ment as the outcome of economic and social as well 
as political forces. To make plain the attitude and 
influence of New England, the middle region, the 
south, and the west, and of the public men who 
reflected the changing conditions of those sections 
in the period under consideration, has been my 
principal purpose. 

The limits of the volume have prevented the elab- 
oration of some points well worthy of fuller treat- 
ment; and, by the plan of the series, certain as- 
pects of the period have been reserved for other 
writers. 

I desire to express my cordial appreciation of the 
friendly criticism and assistance I have received 
from the editor, Professor Hart. To Professor Carl 
R. Fish, Professor A. A. Young, and Dr. U. B. Phil- 
lips, my colleagues, I am indebted for a critical 
reading of several chapters. I have drawn on the 
manuscript sources possessed by Dr. Phillips for 
information on many points of southern history. 

VOL. XIV. 2 



xviii AUTHOR'S PREFACE 

Several of the topics dealt with in the volume have 
been investigated by graduate students in my sem- 
inary; particularly I have profited by the papers 
of Professor Homer C. Hockett on the Missouri 
Compromise and the rise of Jacksonian democracy ; 
of Mr. Royal B. Way, now instructor in history 
in Northwestern University, on internal improve- 
ments; and of Dr. W. V. Pooley and Mr. A. C. Bog- 
gess on the settlement of Illinois. Mr. S. J. Buck, 
my assistant in American history, prepared under 
my direction some of the maps, particularly those 
of congressional votes. 

The map of western fur-trading posts in Captain 
Chittenden's excellent History of the American Fur 
Trade furnished the basis for the map of western 
posts and trails. In the construction of the map of 
highways and waterways, I have used the map of 
H. S. Tanner, 1825, and Hewett's American Trav- 
eller (Washington, 1825). From the maps in the 
Eighteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Eth- 
nology have been drawn the data for the map of 
Indian cessions. The editor kindly supplied the 
map of Russian settlements and claims. 

For the portrait of Henry Clay, which forms the 
frontispiece, thanks are due to Mr. Charles Henry 
Hart, of Philadelphia, the owner of the life-mask 
made by J. H. Browere. 

Frederick J. Turner. 



RISE OF THE NEW WEST 



RISE OF THE NEW WEST 



CHAPTER I 

NATIONALISM AND SECTIONALISM 
(1815-1830) 

THE history of the United States is the history 
of a growing nation. Every period of its life 
is a transitional period, but that from the close of 
the War of 181 2 to the election of Andrew Jackson 
was peculiarly one of readjustment. It was during 1 
this time that the new republic gave clear evidence! 
that it was throwing off the last remnants of colonial | 
dependence. The Revolution had not fully severed! 
the United States from the European state system; 
but now the United States attained complete in-j 
dependence and asserted its predominance in the! 
western continent. It was in this period that the; 
nation strengthened its hold on the Gulf of Mexico! 
by the acquisition of Florida, recognized the inde-i 
pendence of the revolting Spanish-American colo-| 
nies, and took the leadership of the free sisterhood | 
of the New World under the terms of the Monroe' 
Doctrine. 



4 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1815 

The joyous outburst of nationalism which at first 
succeeded the dissensions of the period of war re- 
vealed itself in measures passed in Congress, under 
the leadership of Calhoun and Clay ; it spoke clearly 
in the decisions of Judge Marshall ; and in the lofty 
tone of condemnation with which the country as a 
whole reproached New England for the sectional- 
ism exhibited in the Hartford Convention.' 

It was not only in the field of foreign relations, 
in an aroused national sentiment, and in a realiza- 
tion that the future of the country lay in the de- 
velopment of its own resources that America gave 
evidence of fundamental change. In the industrial 
field transportation was revolutionized by the in- 
troduction of the steamboat and by the develop- 
ment of canals and turnpikes. The factory system, 
nourished by the restrictions of the embargo and 
the war, rapidly developed until American manu- 
factures became an interest which, in political im- 
portance, outweighed the old industries of shipping 
and foreign commerce. The expansion of cotton- 
planting transformed the energies of the south, ex- 
tended her activity into the newer regions of the 
Gulf, and gave a new life to the decaying institu- 
tion of slavery. 

From all the older sections, but especially from 
the south and its colonies in Kentucky and Ten- 
nessee, a flood of colonists was spreading along the 

* Babcock, ^w. Nationality (Am. Nation, XIII.), chaps, ix., 
xviii.; Gallatin, Writings, I., 700. 



1815] NATION AND SECTIONS 5 

waters of the west. In the Mississippi Valley the 
forests were falling before the blows of the pioneers, 
cities were developing where clearings had just let 
in the light of day, and new commonwealths were 
seeking outlets for their surplus and rising to in- 
dustrial and political power. It is this vast develop- 
ment of the internal resources of the United States, 
the "Rise of the New West," that gives the tone to 
the period. "The peace," wrote Webster in later 
years, " brought about an entirely new and a most 
interesting state of things; it opened to us other 
prospects and suggested other duties. We our- 
selves were changed, and the whole world was 
changed. . . . Other nations would produce for them- 
selves, and carry for themselves, and manufacture 
for themselves, to the full extent of their abilities. 
The crops of our plains would no longer sustain 
European armies, nor our ships longer supply those 
whom war had rendered unable to supply them- 
selves. It was obvious, that, under these circum- 
stances, the country would begin to survey itself, 
and to estimate its own capacity of improvement." * 
These very forces of economic transformatic^ii 
were soon followed by a distinct reaction against 
the spirit of nationalism and consolidation which 
had flamed out at the close of the War of 181 2. 
This was shown, not only in protests against the 
loose - construction tendencies of Congress, and in 
denunciations of the decisions of the great chief- 

' Webster, Writings (National ed.), VI., 28. 



6 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1815 

justice, but more significantly in the tendency of 
the separate geographical divisions of the country 
to follow their own interests and to make combina- 
tions with one another on this basis. 

From one point of view the United States, even 
in this day of its youth, was more like an empire 
than a nation. Sectionalism had been fundamental 
in American history before the period which we 
have reached. The vast physiographic provinces 
of the country formed the basis for the develop- 
ment of natural economic and social areas, com- 
parable in their size, industrial resources, and 
spirit, to nations of the Old World. In our period 
these sections underwent striking transformations, 
and engaged, under new conditions, in the old 
struggle for power. Their leaders, changing their 
attitude towards public questions as the economic 
conditions of their sections changed, were obliged 
not only to adjust themselves to the interests of 
the sections which they represented, but also, if 
they would achieve a national career, to make ef- 
fective combinations with other sections.* 

This gives the clew to the decade. Underneath 
the superficial calm of the "Era of Good Feeling," 
and in contradiction to the apparent absorption of 
all parties into one, there were arising new issues, 
hew party formations, and some of the most pro- 
found changes in the history of American evolution. 

'Turner, "Problems of American History," in Congress of 
Arts and Sciences, St. Louis, II. 



•VI 




1825] NATION AND SECTIONS 7 

The men of the time were not unaware of these 
tendencies. Writing in 1823, Henry Clay declared 
that it was a just principle to inquire what great 
interests belong to each section of our country, 
and to promote those interests, as far as practi- 
cable, consistently with the Constitution, having 
always an eye to the welfare of the whole. " As- 
suming this principle," said he, " does any one 
doubt that if New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, 
Delaware, Maryland, and the Western States con- 
stituted an independent nation, it would immedi- 
ately protect the important interests in question? 
And is it not to be feared that, if protection is 
not to be found for vital interests, from the ex- 
isting systems, in great parts of the confeder- 
acy, those parts will ultimately seek to establish 
a system that will afford the requisite protec- 
tion?"^ 

While the most prominent western statesman 
thus expressed his conviction that national affairs 
were to be conducted through combinations be- 
tween sections on the basis of peculiar interests, 
Calhoun, at first a nationalist, later the leader of 
the south, changed his policy to a similar system 
of adjustments between the rival sections. John 
Quincy Adams, in 18 19, said of Calhoun: "he is 
above all sectional and factious prejudices more 
than any other statesman of this union with whom 

* Clay, Works, IV., 81, 82; Annals of Cong., 18 Cong., i Sess., 
II., 1997, 2423. 



8 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1815 

I have ever acted." * But Calhoun, by the close of 
the decade, was not only complaining that the pro- 
tective policy of certain sections set a dangerous 
example "of separate representation, and associa- 
tion of great Geographical interests to promote their 
prosperity at the expense of other interests," but 
he was also convinced that a great defect in our 
system was that the separate geographical inter- 
ests were not sufficiently guarded.^ Speaking, in 
I 1 83 1, of the three great interests of the nation — 
I the north, the south, and the west — he declared 
I that they had been struggling in a fierce war with 
one another, and that the period was approaching 
, which was to determine whether they could be 
reconciled or not so as to perpetuate the Union,' 

We see, therefore, that, in the minds of some of 
the most enlightened statesmen of this decade, 
American politics were essentially a struggle for 
power between rival sections. Even those of most 
enlarged national sympathies and purposes accept- 
ed the fact of sectional rivalries and combinations 
as fundamental in their policies. To understand 
the period, we must begin with a survey of the 
separate sections in the decade from 1820 to 1830, 
and determine what were the main interests shown 
in each and impressed upon the leaders w^ho repre- 

' Adams, Memoirs, W ., 361, VI., 75. 

'Am. Hist. Assoc, Report 1899, II., 250. 

^ Am. Hist. Rev., VI., 742; cf. J. Q. Adams, in Richardson, 
Messages and Papers, II., 297 ; J. Taylor, New Views, 261 ; [Turn- 
bull], The Crisis, No. 2. 



1825] NATION AND SECTIONS 9 

sen ted them. For the purposes of such a survey, 
the conventional division into New England, mid- 
dle region, south, and west may be adopted. It is 
true that within each of these sections there were 
areas which were so different as to constitute al- 
most independent divisions, and which had close 
affihations with other sections. Nevertheless, the 
conventional grouping will reveal fundamental and 
contrasted interests and types of life between the 
various sections. In the rivalries of their leaders 
these sectional differences found political expression. 
By first presenting a narrative of forces in the sep- 
arate sections, the narrative of events in the nation 
will be better understood. 

A sectional survey, however, cannot fully exhibit 
one profound change, not easy to depict except by 
its results. This was the formation of the self-con- 
scious American democracy, strongest in the west 
and middle region, but running across all sections 
and tending to divide the people on the lines of 
social classes. This democracy came to its own 
when Andrew Jackson triumphed over the old or- 
der of things and rudely threw open the sanctu- 
ary of federal government to the populace. 



CHAPTER II 

NEW ENGLAND 
(1820-1830) 

BY geographical position, the land of the Puri- 
tans was devoted to provincialism. While other 
sections merged into one another and even had a 
west in their own midst, New England was obliged 
to cross populous states in order to reach the re- 
gions into which national life was expanding; and 
her sons who migrated found themselves under 
conditions that weakened their old affiliations and 
linked their fortunes with the section which they 
entered. The ocean had dominated New Eng- 
land's interests and connected her with the Old 
World; the fisheries and carrying - trade had en- 
grossed her attention until the embargo and the 
War of 1 81 2 gave importance to her manufactures. 
In spirit, also, New England was a section apart. 
The impress of Puritanism was still strong upon 
her, and the unity of her moral life was exceptional. 
Moreover, up to the beginning of the decade with 
which we have to deal, New England had a pop- 
ulation of almost unmixed English origin, contrast- 



1830] NEW ENGLAND II 

ing sharply, in this respect, with the other sec- 
tions.* 

With these peculiarities, New England often 
played an important sectional role, not the least 
effective instance of which had been her inde- 
pendent attitude in the War of 181 2.' By 1820, 
not only were profound economic and social changes 
affecting the section, but its relative importance as 
a factor in our political life was declining.* The 
trans - Alleghany states, which in 1790 reported 
only a little over one hundred thousand souls, at 
a time when New England's population was over 
one million, had in 1820 reached a population of 
nearly two millions and a quarter, while New Eng- 
gland had not much over a million and a half. 
Ten years later, the latter section had less than 
two millions, while the western states beyond the 
Alleghanies had over three millions and a half, and 
the people northwest of the Ohio River alone num- 
bered nearly a million and a half. In 1820 the 
total population of New England was about equal 
to the combined population of New York and New 
Jersey; but its increase between 1820 and 1830 was 
hardly three hundred thousand, not much over 

» For the characteristics of New England in colonial times, see 
Tyler, England in America, chaps, xviii., xix.; Andrews, Colo- 
nial Selj-Government, chaps, xviii., xix.; Greene, Provincial 
America, chaps, xii., xiii., xvi. -xviii. ; Bassett, Federalist System, 
chaps, xi., xiii. (Am. Nation, IV., V., VI., XI.). 

'Babcock, Am. Nationality {Am. Nation, XIII.), chap. ix. 

• Adams, United States, IX., chaps, iv., vii. 



12 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

half that of New York, and less than the gain of 
Ohio. If Maine, the growing state of the group, 
be excluded, the increase of the whole section was 
less than that of the frontier state of Indiana. 
"Our New England prosperity and importance are 
passing away," wrote Webster at the beginning of 
the period.* 

Were it not that New England was passing 
through a series of revolutionary economic changes, 
not fully appreciated at that time, doubtless the 
percentage of her growth would have been even 
more unfavorable. As it was, the rise of new 
manufactures helped to save her from becoming an 
entirely stationary section. In the course of the 
preceding two decades, New England's shipping 
industry had reached an extraordinary height, by 
reason of her control of the neutral trade during 
the European wars. The close of that period saw 
an apparent decline in her relative maritime power 
in the Union, but the shipping and commercial in- 
terests were still strong. New England possessed 
half the vessels owned in the United States and 
over half the seamen. Massachusetts alone had a 
quarter of the ships of the nation and over a third 
of the sailors.'' Of the exports of the United 
States in 1820, the statistics gave to New England 
about twenty per cent., nine-tenths of which were 



' McMaster, Webster, 90. 

'Pitkin, Statistical View (ed. of 1835), 350- 



i83o] NEW ENGLAND 13 

from Massachusetts.' This is rather an under- 
estimate of the share of New England, because a 
portion of the commerce fitted out by her capital 
and her ships sought the harbor of New York. 

Great as was New England's interest in the com- 
mercial policy of the United States, the manufact- 
ures of the section rose to such importance in the 
course of this decade that the policy of the section 
was divided. The statistics of the manufactures of 
the United States at the beginning and at the end 
of the period were so defective that little depend- 
ence can be placed upon them for details. But 
the figures for New England were more complete 
than for the other regions; the product of her 
cotton mills increased in value from two and one- 
half million dollars in 1820 to over fifteen and one- 
half millions in 1831 ; and her woollen products rose 
from less than a million dollars to over eleven 
million dollars. In Massachusetts alone, in the 
same years, the increase in cottons was from about 
seven hundred thousand dollars to over seven 
million seven hundred thousand dollars; and in 
woollens, from less than three hundred thousand 
dollars to over seven million three hundred thou- 
sand dollars.^ 

In brief, the period witnessed the transfer of the 

' Shaler, United States, I., chap, x.; MacGregor, Commercial 
Statistics of America, 41, 58, 63, 72, 126, 133. 

'See Secretary of Treasury, Report, 18^4-185^, pp., 87-92; 
"Treasury Report," in House Exec. Docs., 22 Cong., 1 Sess., I., 
No. 308. 



14 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1830 

] industrial centre of gravity from the harbors to 
( the water-falls, from commerce and navigation to 
manufactures. Besides the textile mills of Rhode 
Island and Connecticut, the Merrimac mills grew 
rapidly around Lowell, Massachusetts; the water- 
powers of New Hampshire became the sites of 
factory towns, and the industrial revolution which, 
in the time of the embargo, began to transfer in- 
dustries from the household to the factory, was 
rapidly carried on. A labor class began to de- 
velop, farmers moved into towns, the daughters 
worked in the mills. It was not long before Irish 
immigrants found their way to the section and re- 
placed the natives in the mills. The old social and 
racial unity began to break down.^ 

Agriculture still occupied the larger number of 
New England people, but it was relatively a de- 
clining interest. As early as 1794, Tench Coxe had 
characterized New England as a completely settled 
region, with the exception of Maine and Vermont. 
The generation that followed saw an expansion of 
agricultural population until the best valley lands 
were taken and the hill - sides were occupied by 
struggling farmers. By 1830 New England was 
importing corn and flour in large quantities from 
the other sections. The raising of cattle and sheep 



• Woollen, "Labor Troubles between 1834 and 1837," in Yale 
Review, I., 87; MartmesiU, Society in America, II., 227, 243, 246; 
Chevalier, Society, Manners, and Politics, 137; Addison, Lucy 
Larcom, 6; Clay, Works, V., 467. 



1830] NEW ENGLAND 15 

increased as grain cultivation declined. The back- 
country of Maine particularly was being occupied 
for cattle farms, and in Vermont and the Berk- 
shires there was, towards the close of the decade, a 
marked tendency to combine the small farms into 
sheep pastures. Thus, in the tariff agitation of the 
latter part of the decade, these two areas of west- 
ern New England showed a decided sympathy with 
the interests of the wool - growers of the country 
at large. This tendency also fostered emigration 
from New England, since it diminished the num- 
ber of small farms. By the sale of their lands to 
their wealthier neighbors, the New England farmers 
were able to go west with money to invest.^ 

In the outlying parts, like the back-country of 
Vermont, farmers still lived under primitive in- 
dustrial conditions, supporting the family largely 
from the products of the farm, weaving and spin- 
ning under the conditions of household industry 
that had characterized the colonial period, slaugh- 
tering their cattle and hogs, and packing their 
cheese. When the cold weather set in, caravans 
of Vermont farmers passed, by sledges, to the 
commercial centres of New England.^ But the 
conditions of life were hard for the back-country 
farmer, and the time was rapidly approaching when 

* Niles' Register, XLIX., 68; Smith and Rann, Rutland County 
{Vt.], 166; Goodhue, Hist, of Shoreham [Vt.], 59; Nat. Assoc, 
of Wool Manufacturers, Bulletin, XXX., 47, 242, 261. 

' Heaton, Story of Vermont, chap. vi. 

VOL. XIV. — 3 



i6 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

the attractions of the western prairies would cause 
a great exodus from these regions. 
\ While New England underwent the economic 
changes that have been mentioned, a political rev- 
lolution was also in progress. The old Federalist 
■party and Federalist ideas gradually gave way. 
Federalism found its most complete expression in 
Connecticut, "the land of steady habits," where 
"Innovation" had always been frowned upon by a 
governing class in which the Congregational clergy 
were powerful. Permanence in office and the in- 
fluence of the clergy were prominent characteristics 
of the Connecticut government.^ The ceremonies 
of the counting of votes for governor indicated the 
position of the dominant classes in this society. 
This solemnity was performed in the church. 
"After the Representatives," wrote Dwight, the 
president of Yale College, "walk the Preacher of 
the Day, and the Preacher of the succeeding year: 
and a numerous body of the Clergy, usually more 
than one hundred, close the procession." He notes 
that there were several thousand spectators from 
all over the state, who were perfectly decorous, not 
even engaging in noisy conversation, and that a 
public dinner was regularly given by the state to 
the clergy who were present at the election.' 

After the War of 181 2, this dominance of the 

' Dwight. Travels, I., 262, 263, 291; Welling, "Conn. Federal- 
ism," in N. Y. Hist. Soc, Address, 1890, pp. 39-41. 
•Dwight, Travels, I., 267. 



1830] NEW ENGLAND 17 

Congregational clergy throughout the section was 
attacked by a combination of religious and polit- 
ical forces/ There had been a steady growth of 
denominations like the Baptists and Methodists 
in New England. As a rule, these were located 
in the remoter and newer communities, and, where 
they were strongest, there was certain to be a 
considerable democratic influence. Not only did 
these denominations tend to unite against the Fed- 
eralists and the Congregationalists, but they found 
useful allies in the members of the old and influ- 
ential Episcopal church, who had with them a 
common grievance because of the relations between 
the state and Congregationalism. Although the 
original support of the Congregational clergy by 
public taxation had been modified by successive 
acts of legislation in most of these states, so that 
persons not of that church might make their legal 
contributions for the support of their own clergy,' 
yet this had been achieved only recently and but 
incompletely. 

We find, therefore, that the alliance of Episco- 
palians and Dissenters against the dominant clergy 
and the Federalists was the key to internal politics 
at the opening of our period. "The old political 
distinctions," wrote the editor of the Vermont 
Journal, "seem to have given place to religious 

' Schouler, United States, II., 282, 511, III., 52; Adams, 
United States, IX., 133. 
* Fearon, Sketches of America, 114. 



i8 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

ones." But the religious contentions were so 
closely interwoven with the struggle of New Eng- 
land's democracy to throw off the control of the 
established classes, that the contest was in reality 
rather more political and social than religious. By 
her constitutional convention of 181 8, Connecticut 
practically disestablished the Congregational church 
and did away with the old manner of choosing as- 
sistants.* In the election of 1820 the Republican 
candidate for governor was elected by a decisive 
vote, and all of Connecticut's representation in 
the lower house of Congress was Republican,' al- 
though, in 1 81 6, the Federalist candidate had been 
chosen by a small majority.' New Hampshire's 
toleration act was passed in 1819, but she had 
achieved her revolution as early as 181 6, when a 
union of the anti - Congregational denominations 
with the Republicans destroyed the ascendency of 
the Federalists and tried to break that party's con- 
trol of the educational centre at Dartmouth College.* 
The contest was not so clearly marked in Massa- 
chusetts as in the other states, for the old centres 
of Congregational power, notably Harvard College, 
had already begun to feel the liberalizing influence 
of the Unitarian movement. Congregationalism in 

* Baldwin, "The Three Constitutions of Conn.," in New Haven 
Colony Hist. Soc, Papers, V., 210-214. 

*N ties' Register, XVIII., 128. 

* Adams, United States, IX., 133. 

*F. B. Sanborn, New Hampshire, 251 et seq.; Barstow, New 
Hampshire, chaps, xi., xii.; Plumer, William Plumer, 437-460. 



1833] NEW ENGLAND 19 

Massachusetts divided into warring camps* and was 
not in a position to exercise the political power it 
had shown in other states of New England. The 
discussion in that state between the Unitarian 
and orthodox wings of the Congregational churches 
tended, on the whole, to moderate the extreme 
views of each, as well as to prevent their united 
domination. In her constitutional convention of ' 
1820, Massachusetts refused to do away with the 
advantage which the Congregational church had in 
the matter of public support, and it was not imtil 
1833 that the other denominations secured the com- 
plete separation of church and state. The moder- 
ate attitude of the Federalists of the state length- 
ened their tenure of power. Governor Brooks, 
elected by the Federalists in 181 7, was a friend of 
Monroe, and a moderate who often took Republi- 
cans for his counsellors, a genuine representative of 
what has been aptly termed the " Indian summer 
of Federalism in Massachusetts." 

The Republican party controlled the other states 
of the section, but there was in New England, as 
a whole, a gradual decline and absorption, rather 
than a destruction, of the Federalist party, while, at 
the same time, marked internal political differences 
constituted a basis for subsequent political con- 
flicts. Just before he took his seat in Congress in 
1823, Webster lamented to Judge Story that New 
England did not get out of the "dirty squabble of 

* Walker, Cong. Churches in the U. 5., 303-308. 



20 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

local politics, and assert her proper character and 
consequence." "We are disgraced," he said, "be- 
yond help or hope by these things. There is a 
Federal interest, a Democratic interest, a bankrupt 
interest, an orthodox interest, and a middling in- 
terest; but I see no national interest, nor any 
national feeling in the whole matter."* 

In general, northern New England — Maine, New 
Hampshire, and Vermont — showed a distinct ten- 
dency towards Democracy; in southern New Eng- 
land the fortifications of Federalism and Congrega- 
tional power lay in a wide belt along the Connecticut 
River, while along the sea-coast and in the Berk- 
shire region the Democratic forces showed strength. 

From the outlying rural forces, where Democracy 
was strong, the settlement of New - Englanders in 
the middle west was to come. To Timothy Dwight, 
the president of Yale, who voiced the extreme con- 
servatism of Federal New England, the pioneers 
seemed unable to live in regular society. "They 
are impatient of the restraints of law, religion, and 
morality; grumble about the taxes, by which Rulers, 
Ministers, and School-masters, are supported; and 
complain incessantly, as well as bitterly, of the 
extortions of mechanics, farmers, merchants, and 
physicians; to whom they are always indebted. At 
the same time, they are usually possessed, in their 
own view, of uncommon wisdom; understand medi- 
cal science, politics, and religion, better than those, 

' McMaster, Webster, 99. 



1830] NEW ENGLAND 21 

who have studied them through life." These rest- 
less men, with nothing to lose, who were delighted 
with innovation, were, in his judgment, of the type 
that had ruined Greece and Rome. " In mercy, 
therefore," exclaimed Dwight, "to the sober, in- 
dustrious, and well - disposed inhabitants. Provi- 
dence has opened in the vast western wilderness 
a retreat, sufficiently alluring to draw them away 
from the land of their nativity. We have many 
troubles even now; but we should have many more, 
if this body of foresters had remained at home." * 

Perhaps the most striking feature of New Eng- 
land life was its organization into communities. 
What impressed the traveller from other sections 
or from the Old World was partly the small farms, 
divided into petty fields by stone fences, but, above 
all, "the clustering of habitations in villages instead 
of dispersing them at intervals of a mile over the 
country." The spires of the white churches of 
separate hamlets dotted the landscape. Simple 
comfort and thrift were characteristic of the region. 
"Here," wrote a Virginia planter, travelling in New 
England in the early thirties, "is not apparent a 
hundredth part of the abject squalid poverty that 
our State presents." ^ 

The morale of New England was distinctive. 
Puritanism had founded the section, and two cen- 
turies of Calvinistic discipline had moulded the New 

> Dwight, Travels, II., 458-463. 

'"Minor's Journal," in Atlantic Monthly, XXVI., 333. 



22 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

England conscience. That serious self-conscious- 
ness, that self-scrutiny, almost morbid at times, by 
which the Puritan tried to solve the problem of his 
personal salvation, to determine whether he was 
of the elect,* was accompanied by an almost equal 
anxiety concerning the conduct of his neighbors. 
The community life of New England emphasized 
this trait. 

Tudor, who was not friendly to the ideals of the 
"land of steady habits," criticised "the narrowing 
influence of local policy," and lamented the "sort 
of habitual, pervading police, made up of Calvinistic 
inquisition and village scrutiny" in Connecticut.^ 
Not to be one's brother's keeper and not to assent 
to the dictates of community sentiment were in- 
dications of moral laxity. This long training in 
theological inquiry, this continued emphasis upon 
conduct, and this use of community sentiment as 
a means of enforcing certain moral and political 
ideals, led the New-Englander to war with opposing 
conceptions wherever he went. 

A test of the ideals of New England is found in 
the attitude of those who spread into new regions. 
The migrating Yankee was a reformer. A con- 
siderable proportion of the New - Englanders who 
left the section were " come-outers " in religion as 
in politics ; many of the Vermonters and the pioneers 
who went west were radicals. But the majority of 

' Wendell, Cotton Mather, 6. 

' Tudor, Letters on the Eastern States (ed. of 1821), 60. 



1830] NEW ENGLAND 23 

these dissenters from the established order carried 
with them a body of ideas regarding conduct and 
a way of looking at the world that were deeply in- 
fluenced b}^ their old Puritan training. If, indeed, 
they revolted from the older type of Calvinism in 
the freer air of a new country, they were, by this 
sudden release from restraint, likely to develop 
"isms" of their own, which revealed the strong 
underlying forces of religious thinking. Lacking 
the restraining influence of the old Congregational 
system, some of them contented themselves with 
placing greater emphasis upon emotional religion 
and eagerly embraced membership in churches like 
the Baptist or Methodist, or accepted fellowship 
with Presbyterians and welcomed the revival spirit 
of the western churches. 

Others used their freedom to proclaim a new order 
of things in the religious world. Most noteworthy 
was Mormonism, which was founded by a migrating 
New England family and was announced and reach- 
ed its first success among the New - Englanders of 
New York and Ohio. Antimasonry and spiritual- 
ism flourished in the Greater New England in which 
these emancipated Puritans settled. Wherever the 
New-Englander went he was a leader in reform, in 
temperance crusades, in abolition of slavery, in 
Bible societies, in home missions, in the evangeli- 
zation of the west, in the promotion of schools, and 
in the establishment of sectarian colleges. 

Perhaps the most significant elements in the dis- 



24 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

integration of the old Congregationalism in New 
England itself, however, were furnished by the Uni- 
tarians and the Universalists. For nearly a genera- 
tion the liberal movement in religion had been pro- 
gressing. The Unitarian revolt, of which Channing 
was the most important leader, laid its emphasis 
upon conduct rather than upon a plan of salvation 
by atonement. In place of original sin and total 
depravity, it came more and more to put stress upon 
the fatherhood of God and the dignity of man. The 
new optimism of this faith was carried in still an- 
other direction by the Universalist movement, with 
its gospel of universal salvation.* 

The strength of the Unitarian movement was 
confined to a limited area about Boston, but within 
its own sphere of influence it contested successfully 
with the old Congregational power, captured Har- 
vard College, and caught the imaginations of large 
numbers of the best educated and prosperous classes 
of the community. Attempting to adjust them- 
selves between the old order of things on the one 
side, and the new forces of evangelism and lib- 
eralism on the other, another great body of Con- 
gregationalists found a middle ground in a move- 
ment of modified Calvinism, which sustained the 
life of Congregationalism in large areas of New 
England. By these movements of conflict and re- 
adjustment, whatever of unity the older Congrega- 
tional faith had possessed was gradually broken 

* C£. Babcock, Am. Nationality (Am. Nation, XIII.), chap. xi. 



1831] NEW ENGLAND 25 

down and a renaissance of religious and moral ideas 
was ushered in. 

This change was soon to find expression in a new 
literary movement in New England, a movement 
in which poetry and prose were to take on a cheer- 
ful optimism, a joy in life, and an idealism. This 
new literature reflected the influence of the Unitari- 
an movement, the influence of European romantic 
literature, and the influence of German philosophy. 
Before long the Transcendentalists proclaimed the 
new idealism that was showing itself about Bos- 
ton.* Bryant, Longfellow, Whittier, Hawthorne, 
and Emerson were all prophesied in the forces of 
intellectual change that now spread over the sec- 
tion. 

Even New England's statesmen were deeply in- 
fluenced by the literary spirit. Daniel Webster, 
although the son of a New Hampshire pioneer 
whose log cabin was on the edge of the vast forest 
that stretched north to Canada, had won an educa- 
tion at the "little college" at Dartmouth; and, after 
his removal to Boston, he captivated New England 
by his noble commemorative orations and enriched 
his arguments before the courts by the splendor of 
his style. He united the strong, passionate nature 
of his backwoods father with a mind brought under 
the influences of the cultured society of Boston. 
John Quincy Adams, also, had been professor of 
rhetoric and oratory at Harvard, and he found in 

* Wendell, Literary Hist, of America, book V., chaps, iv., v. 



26 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

the classics a solace when the political world grew 
dark around him, Edward Everett represented 
even more clearly the union of the man of letters 
with the political leader. If we except the brill- 
iant but erratic John Randolph, of Roanoke, no 
statesman from other sections showed this impress 
of literature. 

While these forces were developing, a liberaliz- 
ing of the colleges, and particularly of Harvard, by 
the introduction of new courses in literature and 
science, was in progress. Reform movements, de- 
signed to give fuller expression to common-school 
public education, began, and already in 182 1 Bos- 
ton had established the first English high -school, 
precursor of a movement of profound importance in 
the uplifting of the masses. Lyceimis and special 
schools for the laborers flourished in the new cen- 
tres of manufacturing. The smaller educational 
centres, like Dartmouth, Bowdoin, Amherst, and 
Williams, where the farmer boys of New England 
worked their way through college, sent out each 
year men to other sections to become leaders at the 
bar, in the pulpit, in the press, and in the newer 
colleges. The careers of Amos Kendall, Prentiss, 
and others illustrate these tendencies. In short, 
New England was training herself to be the school- 
mistress of the nation. Her abiding power was to 
lie in the influence which she exerted in letters, in 
education, and in reform. She was to find a new 
life and a larger sphere of activity in the wide-spread 



1830] NEW ENGLAND 27 

western communities which were already invaded 
by her sons. In furnishing men of talent in these 
fields she was to have an influence out of all relation 
to her population.* 

* Ceuturi> Mag., XLVIL, 43. 



CHAPTER III 

THE MIDDLE REGION 
(1820-1830) 

THE middle states formed a zone of transition 
between the east and the west, the north and 
the south. ^ Geographically, they lay on the line of 
the natural routes between the Atlantic on the one 
side, and the Ohio and the Great Lakes on the 
other. ^ The waters of the Susquehanna, rising near 
the lake region of central New York, flowed to 
Chesapeake Bay, which opened into the Atlantic far 
down Virginia's coast -line. The Great Valley ran 
through eastern Pennsylvania, across Maryland, 
and, in the form of the Shenandoah Valley, made 
a natural highway to the interior of North Carolina. 
New York City and Philadelphia saw in an intimate 
connection with the rising west the pledge of their 
prosperity; and Baltimore, which was both a me- 
tropolis of the south and of the middle region, ex- 

' For earlier discussions of the middle colonies and states, see 
Tyler, England in America, chap, xvii.; Andrews, Colonial Self- 
Government, chaps, v., vii., xviii., xix.; Greene, Provincial 
America, chaps, xvi. -xviii. {Am. Nation, IV., V., VI.) 

'Gallatin, Writings, III., 49; Clinton, in Laws of the State of 
N. Y. in Relation to Erie and Chantplain Canals, I., 140. 



1830] MIDDLE REGION 29 

tended her trade north to central New York, west 
to the Ohio, and south into Virginia, and, like her 
rivals, sent her fleets to garner the commercial har- 
vest of the sea. 

In the composition of its population, also, the 
middle region was a land of transitions between 
sections, and a prototype of the modern United 
States, composite in its nationality. In New York 
an influential Dutch element still remained; the 
New England settlers had colonized the western 
half of the state and about equalled the native 
population. In Pennsylvania, Germans and Scotch- 
Irishmen had settled in such numbers in the course 
of the eighteenth century that, by the time of the 
Revolution, her population was almost evenly di- 
vided between these stocks and the English.* There 
was also a larger proportion of recent immigrants 
than in any other state, for by 1830 Pennsylvania 
had one unnaturalized alien to every fifty inhabi- 
tants. 

Following the Great Valley in the middle of the 
same century, the Scotch-Irish and German settlers 
had poured into the up-country of the south, so 
that these interior counties of Virginia and the 
Carolinas were like a peninsula thrust down from 
Pennsylvania into the south, with economic, racial, 
social, and religious connections which made an 
intimate bond between the two sections. A multi- 

• See Lincoln, Revolutionary Movement in Pa., in University 
of Pa., Publications, I., 24, 35. 



30 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

tude of religious sects flourished in tolerant Penn- 
sylvania, and even the system of local government 
was a combination of the New England town and 
the southern county. 

This region, therefore, was essentially a mediat- 
ing, transitional zone, including in its midst an 
outlying New England and a west, and lacking the 
essential traits of a separate section. It was funda- 
mentally national in its physiography, its composi- 
tion, and its ideals — a fighting-ground for political 
issues which found their leaders in the other sections. 

Compared with New England, the middle region 
was a rapidly growing section. The population of 
New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Dela- 
ware combined was about two and three-quarter 
millions in 1820, and three and two-third millions 
in 1830. By that date New York alone balanced 
all New England in the number of its people. But 
it was its western half that permitted this growth of 
the middle section. During the decade 1 820-1 830, 
New York west of Oneida Lake increased in popu- 
lation by a percentage more than twice as great, 
and by an amount almost as great, as that of the 
populous eastern half of the state. By the end of 
the decade, about one- third of Pennsylvania's popu- 
lation was found west of her central counties. At 
that time New York and Pennsylvania became the 
most populous states in the Union. Virginia and 
Massachusetts, which in 1790 held the lead, had 
now fallen to third and eighth place respectively. 



1830] MIDDLE REGION 31 

New Jersey, meanwhile, lagged far behind, and Del- 
aware's rate of increase was only five and one-half 
per cent. 

In 1829 a member of the Virginia constitutional 
convention asked: "Do gentlemen really believe, 
that it is owing to any diversity in the principles of 
the State Governments of the two states, that New 
York has advanced to be the first state in the 
Union, and that Virginia, from being the first, is 
now the third, in wealth and population? Virginia 
ceded away her Kentucky, to form a new state; 
and New York has retained her Genessee — there lies 
the whole secret." * 

In the closing years of the eighteenth century 
and the first decade of the nineteenth the New 
York lands beyond the sources of the Mohawk had 
been taken up by a colonization characteristically 
western. New England farmers swarmed into the 
region, hard on the heels of the retreating Indians. 
Scarcely more than a decade before 1820 western 
New York presented typically frontier conditions. 
The settlers felled and burned the forest, built lit- 
tle towns, and erected mills, and now, with a sur- 
plus of agricultural products, they were suffering 
from the lack of a market and were demanding 
transportation facilities. Some of their lumber and 
flour found its way by the lakes and the St. Lawrence 
to Montreal, a portion went by rafts down the Alle- 
gheny to the waters of the Ohio, and some descend- 

^ Va. Constitutional Convention, Debates (1829-1830), 405. 

VOL. XIV. — 4 



32 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1817 

ed the upper tributaries of the Susquehanna and 
found an outlet in Baltimore or Philadelphia; but 
these routes were unreliable and expensive, and b}? 
one of them trade was diverted from the United 
States to Canada. There was a growing demand 
for canals that should give economic unity to New 
York and turn the tide of her interior commerce 
along the Mohawk and Lake Champlain into the 
waters of the Hudson and so to the harbor of New 
York City. The Erie and the Champlain canals 
were the outcome of this demand. 

It is the glory of De Witt Clinton that he saw 
the economic revolution which the Erie Canal would 
work, and that he was able to present clearly and 
effectively the reasons which made the undertaking 
practicable and the financial plan which made it 
possible. He persuaded the legislature by the vis- 
ion of a greater Hudson River, not only reaching 
to the western confines of the state, but even, by 
its connection with Lake Erie, stretching through 
two thousand miles of navigable lakes and rivers 
to the very heart of the interior of the United States. 
To him the Erie Canal was a political as well as an 
economic undertaking. "As a bond of union be- 
tween the Atlantic and western states," he declared, 
"it may prevent the dismemberment of the Ameri- 
can empire. As an organ of communication between 
the Hudson, the Mississippi, the St. Lawrence, the 
great lakes of the north and west, and their tributary 
rivers, it will create the greatest inland trade ever 



1825] MIDDLE REGION 33 

witnessed. The most fertile and extensive regions 
of America will avail themselves of its facilities for 
a market. All their surplus productions, whether 
of the soil, the forest, the mines, or the water, their 
fabrics of art and their supplies of foreign com- 
modities, will concentrate in the city of New- York, 
for transportation abroad or consumption at home. 
Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, trade, navi- 
gation, and the arts, will receive a correspondent 
encouragement. That city will, in the course of 
time become the granary of the world, the em- 
porium of commerce, the seat of manufactures, the 
focus of great moneyed operations, and the concen- 
trating point of vast, disposable, and accumulating 
capitals, which will stimulate, enliven, extend, and 
reward the exertions of human labor and ingenuity, 
in all their processes and exhibitions. And before 
the revolution of a century, the whole island of Man- 
hattan, covered with habitations and replenished with 
a dense population, will constitute one vast city." ^ 

Sanguine as were Clinton's expectations, the 
event more than justified his confidence. By 1825 
the great canal system, reaching by way of Lake 
Champlain to the St. Lawrence, and by way of the 
Mohawk and the lakes of central New York to Lake 
Erie, was opened for traffic throughout its whole 
length. The decrease in transportation charges 
brought prosperity and a tide of population into 
western New York; villages sprang up along the 
» View of the Grand Canal (N. Y., 1825), 20. 



1 



34 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1830 

whole line of the canal ; the water-power was utilized 
for manufactures; land values in the western part 
of the state doubled and in many cases quadrupled ; 
farm produce more than doubled in value. Buffalo 
and Rochester became cities.' The raw products of 
the disappearing forests of western New York — lum- 
ber, staves, pot and pearl ashes, etc., and the grow- 
ing surplus of agricultural products, began to flow 
in increasing volume down this greater Hudson 
River to New York City. The farther west was 
also turning its streams of commerce into this 
channel. The tolls of the canal system were over 
half a million dollars immediately upon its comple- 
tion; for 1830 they were over a million dollars.^ 
By 1833 the annual value of the products sent by 
way of the Erie and Champlain canals was estimated 
at thirteen million dollars.^ At the close of this 
decade the Ohio system of canals, inspired by the 
success of the Erie Canal, had rendered a large area 
of that state tributary to New York. The Great 
Lake navigation grew steadily, the Western Reserve 
increased its population, and the harbor of Cleve- 
land became a centre of trade. 

The effect of all this upon New York City was 

' J. Winden, Inflnence of the Erie Canal (MS. Thesis, Univer- 
sity of Wisconsin); U. S. Census of 1900, Population, I., 430, 
432; Callender, in Quarterly Journal of Economics, XVII., 22; 
Hulbert, Historic Highways, XIV., chap. v. 

' McMaster, United States, V., 135; Canal Commissioners of 
N. Y., Report (January 17, 1833), App. A. 

* Pitkin, Statistical View (ed. of 1835), 577. 



1830] MIDDLE REGION 55 

revolutionary. Its population increased from 123,- 
000 in 1820 to 202,000 in 1830. Its real and per- 
sonal estate rose in value from about seventy million 
dollars in 1820 to about one hundred and twenty- 
five million dollars in 1830.* The most significant 
result of the canal was the development of the com- 
merce of New York City, which rose from a market 
town for the Hudson River to be the metropolis of 
the north. The value of the imports of New York 
state in 1821 was twenty-four million dollars; in 
1825, the year of the completion of the canal, it was 
fifty million dollars. This was an exceptional year, 
however, and in 1830 the value of the imports was 
thirty-six million dollars. In 1821 New York had 
thirty-eight per cent, of the total value of imports 
into the United States; in 1825, over fifty per cent. ; 
and this proportion she maintained during our 
period. In the exports of domestic origin, New 
York was surpassed in 1819 by Louisiana, and in 
1820 by South Carolina, but thereafter the state 
took and held the lead.' In 1823 the amount of 
flour sent from the western portion of New York by 
the Erie Canal equalled the whole amount which 
reached New Orleans from the Mississippi Valley 
in that year.^ The state of New York had by a 

* U. S. Census of 1900, Population, I., 432; MacGregor, Com- 
mercial Statistics of America, 145. 

- Compiled from Pitkin, Statistical View. 

'Based on statistics in Report on Internal Commerce, 18S7, p. 
196; Canal Commissioners of N. Y., Annual Report (February 
ao. 1824), 33. 



36 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

stroke achieved economic unity, and its metrop- 
olis at once became the leading city of the coun- 
, try. 

I Philadelphia lost power as New York City gained 
I it. Though the counties tributary to Philadelphia 
constituted the old centre of population and politi- 
cal power, the significant fact of growth in Pennsyl- 
vania was the increasing importance of Pittsburg at 
the gateway to the Ohio Valley. In the Great Val- 
ley beyond the Blue Ridge lived the descendants 
of those early Germans and Scotch-Irishmen who 
early occupied the broad and level fields of this 
fertile zone, the granary of Pennsylvania. Beyond 
this rock-walled valley lay the mountains in the west 
and north of the state, their little valleys occupied 
by farmers, but already giving promise of the rich 
yield of iron and coal on which the future greatness 
of the state was to rest. The anthracite mines of 
the northeastern corner of the state, which have 
given to their later possessors such influence over 
the industries of the country, were just coming into 
use. The iron ores of the middle mountain counties 
found their way to the forges at Pittsburg. Al- 
ready the bituminous coals of the western counties 
were serving to generate steam-power for the mills 
upon the upper waters of the Ohio, but, as yet, the 
iron manufacturers of the state depended on the 
abundant forests for the production of coke for 
smelting. 

The problem of transportation pressed hard upon 



i83o] MIDDLE REGION 37 

Pennsylvania from the beginning. While Phila- 
delphia was obliged to contest with Baltimore the 
possession of the eastern half of the state, she saw 
the productions of the western counties descending 
the Ohio and Mississippi to New Orleans. Even the 
trade in manufactured goods which she had formerly- 
sent to the western rivers was now menaced from 
two quarters : the development of steam navigation 
on the Mississippi enabled New Orleans to compete 
for this trade; and the construction of the Erie 
Canal, with the projected system of tributary canals 
in Ohio, made it plain to Pennsylvania that New 
York was about to wrest from her the markets of 
the west. It had taken thirty days and cost five 
dollars a hundred pounds to transport goods from 
Philadelphia to Columbus, Ohio; the same arti- 
cles could be brought in twenty days from New 
York, by the Erie Canal, at a cost of two dollars 
and a half a hundred.^ To Pennsylvania the con- 
trol of the western market, always an important 
interest, had led in 1800 to the construction of a 
system of turnpikes to connect Philadelphia with 
Pittsburg over the mountains, which developed a 
great wagon trade. But the days of this wagon 
trade were now numbered, for the National Road, 
joining the Ohio and the Potomac and passing south 
of Pittsburg, diverted a large share of this overland 
trade to Baltimore. The superior safety, rapidi- 
ty, and cheapness of canal communication showed 

* McMaster, United States, V., 136. 



38 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

Pennsylvania that she must adjust her transporta- 
tion to the new conditions. 

The way was prepared by the experience of cor- 
porations attempting to reach the coal-fields of 
northeastern Pennsylvania. In 1820 practically the 
whole output from the anthracite fields came from 
the Lehigh Valley and amounted to three hundred 
and sixty-five tons — an equivalent of one for each 
day of the year. By the end of the decade the 
output of the anthracite fields was about one hun- 
dred and seventy-five thousand tons, and the retail 
price was reduced to six dollars and a half a ton. 
Navigation had been secured by the coal companies 
between the mines and Philadelphia by the Schuyl- 
kill ; the Union Canal connected the Schuylkill and 
Susquehanna, and New York City was supplied by 
the Delaware Canal.* 

This activity in Pennsylvania in the improvement 
of navigation so far had been the work of corpora- 
tions; but now, with the growth of population in 
the west and the completion of the Erie Canal, a 
popular demand arose for state construction of 
inland waterways. In 1825 the legislature passed 
an act under which an extensive system of canals 
was begun, to connect Philadelphia with Pittsburg, 
the Allegheny River with Lake Erie, and Philadel- 
phia with the central counties of New York at the 



* M'Culloch, Commercial Dictionary (ed. of 1852), I., 366; U. S. 
Census of 1880, IV.; Worthington, Finances of Pa. 



1830] MIDDLE REGION 39 

head of the Susquehanna.* Obstacles speedily de- 
veloped in the jealousies of the various sections of 
the state. The farmers of the Great Valley, whose 
interests lay in the development of a communica- 
tion with Baltimore, were not enthusiastic; the 
southern counties of the state, along the line of the 
turnpikes, found their interests threatened ; and the 
citizens of the northwestern counties were unwilling 
to postpone their demands for an outlet while the 
trunk-line was building. These jealousies furnish 
issues for the politics of the state during the rest of 
the decade.' 

Nevertheless, Pennsylvania was growing rich 
through the development of her agriculture and her 
manufactures. The iron industry of the state was 
the largest in the Union. Although the industry 
was only in its infancy, Pittsburg was already pro- 
ducing or receiving a large part of the pig-iron that 
was produced in Pennsylvania. The figures of the 
census of 1820 give to the middle states over forty 
per cent, of the product of pig-iron and castings and 
wrought iron in the United States, the value of the 
latter article for Pennsylvania being one million 
one himdred and fifty-six thousand dollars as against 
four hundred and seventy-two thousand dollars for 
New York,' The influence of this industry upon 

* See chap, xvii., below. 

' McCarthy, Antimasonic Party, in Am. Hist. Assoc, Report 
1902, I., 427. 

' Secretary of Treasury, Report, 1854-1855, p. 90. 



40 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

Pennsylvania politics became apparent in the dis- 
cussions over the protective tariff during the decade. 

Together, New York and Pennsylvania constituted 
a region dominated by interest in the production of 
grain and the manufacture of iron. Vast as was the 
commerce that entered the port of New York, the 
capital and shipping for the port were furnished in 
part by New England, and the real interest of the 
section was bound up with the developing resources 
of the interior of the nation. 

It must not be forgotten that, in these years of 
entrance upon its industrial career, the middle region 
was also the scene of intellectual movements of im- 
portance. These were the days when the Knicker- 
bocker school in New York brought independence 
and reputation to American literature, when Irving, 
although abroad, worked the rich mine of Hudson 
River traditions, and Cooper utilized his early experi- 
ence in the frontier around Lake Otsego to write his 
* ' Leatherstocking Tales. ' ' Movements for social ame- 
lioration abounded. The lighting of New York City 
and Philadelphia by gas diminished crime. Reform 
movements with regard to imprisonment for debt 
and the improvement of the condition of prisons, 
temperance movements, improvements in the ad- 
ministration of the public schools, and the increase 
in the number of high-schools were all indicative 
of the fact that this new democracy was not un- 
responsive to ideals. Among the New England 
element of western New York, as has already been 



1830] MIDDLE REGION 41 

pointed out, there arose some of the most interesting 
religious and political movements of the period, 
such as Mormonism, Spiritualism, and Antimasonry. 
The Presbyterians and Baptists found a sympa- 
thetic constituency in the new regions. It is easy 
to see that the traits of these western counties of 
the middle states were such that idealistic politi- 
cal movements, as antislavery, would find in them 
effective support. 

Obviously, the political traits of this section 
would have a significance proportionate to the 
power of its population and resources. On the 
whole, the middle region was the most democratic 
section of the seaboard, but it was managed by the 
politicians under a system of political bargaining 
for the spoils of office. The old ascendency which 
the great families exercised over New York politics * 
was on the wane. The rise of the western half of 
the state diminished the influence of the successors 
to the patroons; but, nevertheless, family power 
continued to make itself felt, and a group of new 
men arose, around whom factions formed and dis- 
solved in a kaleidoscope of political change. 

During the colonial period, executive patronage 
and land grants had been used to promote the in- 
terests of the men in power, and the reaction against 
executive corruption resulted in a provision in 
New York's constitution of 1777 whereby the ex- 

' Becker, " Nominations in Colonial New York" (Am. Hist. 
Rev.,WI., 261). 



42 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

ecutive was limited by the Council of Appoint- 
ment. The state was divided into four districts, 
and one senator from each was selected by the 
House of Representatives to serve in this council.* 
By 182 1 the council appointed 8287 military officers 
and 6663 civil officers. Nearly all the state officers, 
all the mayors, militia officers, and justices of the 
peace fell under its control.^ This concentration of 
the appointive power in the hands of the dominant 
faction brought the system of rotation in office, and 
the doctrine that to the victors belong the spoils of 
war, to a climax. It led to the building up of politi- 
cal machines by the use of offices, from the lowest 
to the highest, as the currency for political trading. 
The governor was checked, but the leaders of the 
party in power held despotic control over the offices 
of the state. 

This bargaining was facilitated by the extension 
of the system of nominating conventions. From the 
local units of town and county upwards, the custom 
of sending delegates to conventions had early de- 
veloped in the state. It had become a settled prac- 
tice for the representatives of one local unit to agree 
with those of another regarding the order in which 
their favorite sons should receive office. Town bar- 
gained with town, county with county, district with 
district. In place of the system of control by the 
established classes. New York's democracy was leam- 

' Fish, Civil Service, 87. 

* Hammond, Political Parties in N. Y., II., 65. 



i82o] MIDDLE REGION 43 

ing to elaborate the machinery of nomination by 
the people; but in the process there was devel- 
oped a race of managing politicians, and the cam- 
paigns tended to become struggles between personal 
elements for power rather than contests on political 
issues. 

The finished product of New York politics is 
shown in Van Buren, the devotee of "regularity" 
in party and the adroit manager of its machinery. 
Shrewdness, tact, and self-reliant judgment, urbane 
good -humor, mingled with a suspicious and half- 
cynical expression, were written on his face. " Lit- 
tle Van" was an affable, firm, and crafty politician. 
Although he was not a creative statesman, neither 
wa.*? he a mere schemer. He had definite ideas, if 
not convictions, of the proper lines of policy, and 
was able to state them with incisive and forcible 
argument when occasion demanded. To him, per- 
haps, more than to any other of the politicians, fell 
the task of organizing the campaign of Crawford, 
and afterwards of making the political combinations 
that brought in the reign of Andrew Jackson. He 
was the leader of that element of New York politics 
known as the Bucktails, from the emblem worn by 
the Tammany Society. Clinton, his opponent, ex- 
ercised an influence somewhat akin to the Living- 
stons, the Schuylers, the Van Rensselaers, and the 
other great family leaders in the baronial days of 
New York politics. Brusque, arrogant, and ambi- 
tious, he combined the petty enmities of a domineer- 



44 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1S20 

ing politician with flashes of statesman-like insight, 
and he crushed his way to success by an extermi- 
nating warfare against his enemies. Around him 
gathered a personal following embracing one wing 
of the Republicans, aided by a large fraction of the 
old Federal party. For the most part, his strength 
lay along the line of the Erie Canal and in the re- 
gions where the New England element was strong. 

About these New York rivals were grouped many 
lesser lights, for the political organization tended to 
create a multitude of able political leaders, many of 
them capable of holding high position, but few of 
them swayed by compelling ideas or policies. 

In Pennsylvania, where the spoils system and the 
nominating convention developed contemporane- 
ously with the movement in New York, there were 
even fewer men of the highest political rank. Galla- 
tin's effective career belongs to an earlier period, and 
he had no successor, as a national figure, among the 
Pennsylvania party chieftains. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE SOUTH 
(1820-1830) 

IN the decade which forms the subject of this 
volume, no section underwent more far-reach- 
ing changes than did the group of South Atlantic 
states made up of Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, 
and Georgia, with which this chapter will deal un- 
der the name of the south. Then it was that the 
south came to appreciate the effect of the westward 
spread of the cotton-plant upon slavery and politics. 
The invention of the cotton-gin by Eli Whitney,* 
in 1793, made possible the profitable cultivation of 
the short-staple variety of cotton. Before this, the 
labor of taking the seeds by hand from this variety, 
the only one suited to production in the uplands, 
had prevented its use ; thereafter, it was only a ques- 
tion of time when the cotton area, no longer limited 
to the tidewater region, would extend to the interior, 
carrying slavery with it. This invention came at an 
opportune time. Already the inventions of Ark- 
wright, Hargreaves, and Cartwright had worked a 
revolution in the textile industries of England, by 
^ Am. Hist. Review, III., 99. 



46 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [182c 

means of the spinning-jenny, the power-loom, and 
the factory system, furnishing machinery for the 
manufacture of cotton beyond the world's supply.* 
Under the stimulus of this demand for cotton, 
year by year the area of slavery extended towards 
the west. In the twenties, some of the southern 
counties of Virginia were attempting its cultivation;^ 
interior counties of North Carolina were combining 
cotton-raising with their old industries; in South 
Carolina the area of cotton and slavery had ex- 
tended up the rivers well beyond the middle of the 
state;' while in Georgia the cotton planters, so long 
restrained by the Indian line, broke through the bar- 
riers and spread over the newly ceded lands.^ The 
accompanying table shows the progress of this crop : 
It is evident from the figures that tidewater South 
Carolina and Georgia produced practically all of the 
cotton crop in 1791, when the total was but two 
million pounds. By 182 1 the old south produced 
one hundred and seventeen million pounds, and, 
five years later, one hundred and eighty millions. 
But how rapidly in these five years the recently 
settled southwest was overtaking the older section 

* M. B. Hammond, Cotton Industry, chaps, i., ii.; Von Halle, 
" Baumwollproduktion," in SchmoWer, Staats und Soctal-wissen- 
schafthche Forschungen, XV. 

* Va. Const. Conv., Debates (1829 - 1830), ;i;i;}, 336; Martin, 
Gazetteer of Va. and D. C. (1836), 99. 

' Schaper, " Sectionalism and Representation in S. C," in Am, 
Hist. Assoc. Report, 1900, I., 387-393. 

* PhilHps, "Georgia and State Rights," in Ibid., 1901, II., 
140 (map). 



i 



1830] THE SOUTH 47 

COTTON CROP (in million pounds)' 

1834 



South Carolina 
Georgia. , . 
Virginia. . . 
North CaroUna 

Total 

Tennessee. . . , 

Louisiana 

Mississippi . , , 
Alabama. .... 

Florida 

Arkansas 

Total 

Grand Total 



I79I 


1801 


i8it 


l32I 


1826 


1.5 

•5 


20.0 
10. 

4.0 


40.0 

20.0 

8.0 

7.0 


50.0 

45-0 
12.0 

10. 


70.0 

75-0 
25.0 

10 .0 


2 .0 


39-0 


7S-0 


117 


180.0 




I 


3 

2 .0 


20.0 
10,0 
10. 
20.0 


4S-0 
38-0 
20,0 

45-0 
2 .0 

•5 




1 .0 


5-0 


60.0 


150-5 


2 .0 


40.0 


80.0 


177.0 


330-5 



65-5 

75-0 

10. o 
9-5 

160 .0 

45-0 
62 .0 
85.0 
85.0 
20.0 

^ 

297-5 

457-5 



is shown by its total of over one hundred and fifty 
millions. By 1834 the southwest had distanced the 
older section. What had occurred was a repeated 
westward movement: the cotton-plant first spread 
from the sea - coast to the uplands, and then, by 
the beginning of our period, advanced to the Gulf 
plains, until that region achieved supremacy in its 
production. 

How deeply the section was interested in this crop, 
and how influential it was in the commerce of the 
United States, appears from the fact that, in 1820, 
the domestic exports of South Carolina and Georgia 

' Based on MacGregor, Commercial Statistics, 462 ; of. De Bow's 
Review, XVII., 428; Von Halle, Baumwollproduktion, 169; Secre- 
tary of Treasury, Report, 1855-1856, p. 116. There are dis- 
crepancies; the figures are to be taken as illustrative rather than 
exact; e. g., De Bow gives seventy million pounds for Missis- 
sippi in 1826. 

VOL. XIV. — 5 



48 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

amounted to $15,215,000, while the value of the 
whole domestic exports for all the rest of the United 
States was $36,468,000.^ This, however, inadequate- 
ly represents the value of the exports from these two 
cotton states, because a large fraction of the cotton 
was carried by the coastwise trade to northern ports 
and appeared in their shipments. Senator William 
Smith, of South Carolina, estimated that in 1818 the 
real exports of South Carolina and Georgia amounted 
to "more than half as much as that of the other 
states of the Union, including the vast and fertile 
valley of the Mississippi." The average annual 
amount of the exports of cotton, tobacco, and rice 
from the United States between 1821 and 1830 was 
about thirty-three million dollars, while all other 
domestic exports made a sum of but twenty million 
dollars.^ Even greater than New England's interest 
in the carrying-trade was the interest of the south 
in the exchange of her great staples in the markets 
of Europe. 

Never in history, perhaps, was an economic force 
more influential upon the life of a people. As the 
production of cotton increased, the price fell, and 
the seaboard south, feeling the competition of the 
virgin soils of the southwest, saw in the protective 
tariff for the development of northern manu- 
factures the real source of her distress. The 
price of cotton was in these years a barometer 

' Pitkin, Statistical View (ed. of 1835), p. 57. 
^Ibid., 518. 



1830] THE SOUTH 49 

of southern prosperity and of southern discon- 
tent.^ 

Even more important than the effect of cotton 
production upon the prosperity of the south was 
its effect upon her social system. This economic 
transformation resuscitated slavery from a mori- 
bund condition to a vigorous and aggressive life. 
Slowly Virginia and North Carolina came to realize 
that the burden and expense of slavery as the labor 
system for their outworn tobacco and corn fields was 
partly counteracted by the demand for their surplus 
negroes in the cotton-fields of their more southern 
neighbors. When the lower south accepted the sys- 
tem as the basis of its prosperity and its society, 
the tendency in the states of the upper south, ex- 
cept in the pine barrens and the hill country, to 
look upon the institution as a heritage to be re- 
luctantly and apologetically accepted grew fainter. 
The efforts to find some mode of removing the negro 
from their midst gradually came to an end, and they 
adjusted themselves to slavery as a permanent sys- 
tem. Meanwhile, South Carolina and Georgia found 
in the institution the source of their economic well- 
being and hotly challenged the right of other sec- 
tions to speak ill of it or meddle with it in any way, 
lest their domestic security be endangered.^ 



* See chap, xix., below; M. B. Hammond, Cotton Industry, 
part i., App. i.; Donnell, Hist, of Cotton; Watkins, Production 
and Prices of Cotton. 

* See Hart, Slavery and Abolition {Am. Nation, XVI.). 



50 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

f CWhe^the south became fully conscious that sla- 
very set the section apart from the rest of the na- 
tion, when it saw in nationalizing legislation, such as 
protection to manufactures and the construction of 
' a system of internal improvements, the efforts of 
other sections to deprive the cotton states of their 
profits for the benefit of an industrial development 
in which they did not share, deep discontent pre- 
vailed. With but slight intermission from the days 
of Washington to those of Monroe, the tobacco 
planters under the Virginia dynasty had ruled the 
nation. But now, when the centre of power within 
the section passed from the weakening hands of 
Virginia to those of South Carolina, the aggressive 
leader of the Cotton Kingdom, the south found 
itself a minority section in the Union, When it 
realized this, it denied the right of the majority to 
rule, and proceeded to elaborate a system of minority 
rights as a protection against the forces of national 
development, believing that these forces threatened 
the foundations of the prosperity and even the social 

. safety of the south. 

From the middle of the eighteenth century the 
seaboard planters had been learning the lesson of 
control by a fraction of the population. The south 
was by no means a unified region in its physiography. 
The Blue Ridge cut off the low country of Virginia 
from the Shenandoah Valley, and beyond this val- 
ley the Alleghanies separated the rest of the state 
from those counties which we now know as West 



1830I THE SOUTH 51 

Virginia. By the time of the Revolution, in the 
Carolinas and Georgia, a belt of pine barrens, skirt- 
ing the "fall line" from fifty to one hundred miles 
from the coast, divided the region of tidewater 
planters of these states from the small farmers of 
the up-country. This population of the interior had 
entered the region in the course of the second half of 
the eighteenth century. Scotch-Irishmen and Ger- 
mans passed down the Great Valley from Penn- 
sylvania into Virginia, and through the gaps in the 
Blue Ridge out to the Piedmont region of the 
Carolinas, while contemporaneously other streams 
from Charleston advanced to meet them/ Thus, 
at the close of the eighteenth century, the south was 
divided into two areas presenting contrasted types 
of civilization. On the one side were the planters, 
raising their staple crops of tobacco, rice, and in- 
digo, together with some cultivation of the cereals. 
To this region belonged the slaves. On the other 
side was this area of small farmers, raising live- 
stock, wheat, and corn under the same conditions 
of pioneer farming as characterized the interior of 
Pennsylvania, 

From the second half of the eighteenth century 
down to the time with which this volume deals, 
there was a persistent struggle between the planters 
of the coast, who controlled the wealth of the region, 
and the free farmers of the interior of Maryland, 

' Bassett, in Am. Hist. Assoc, Report 1894, p. 141; Schaper, 
ibid., 1900, I., 317; Phillips, ibid., 1901, II., 88. 



52 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. The tidewater 
counties retained the political power which they 
already possessed before this tide of settlement 
flowed into the back-country. Refusing in most of 
these states to reapportion on the basis of numbers, 
they protected their slaves and their wealth against 
the dangers of a democracy interested in internal 
improvements and capable of imposing a tax upon 
slave property in order to promote their ends. In 
Virginia, in 1825, for example, the western men com- 
plained that twenty counties in the upper country, 
with over two hundred and twenty thousand free 
white inhabitants, had no more weight in the gov- 
ernment than twenty counties on tidewater, contain- 
ing only about fifty thousand ; that the six smallest 
counties in the state, compared with the six largest, 
enjoyed nearly ten times as much political power. ^ 
To the gentlemen planters of the seaboard, the idea 
of falling under the control of the farmers of the 
interior of the south seemed intolerable. 

It was only as slavery spread into the uplands, 
with the cultivation of cotton, that the lowlands be- 
gan to concede and to permit an increased power in 
the legislatures to the sections most nearly assimi- 
lated to the seaboard type. South Carolina achieved 
this end in 1808 by the plan of giving to the sea- 
board the control of one house, while the interior 
held the other; but it is to be noted that this con- 
cession was not made until slavery had pushed so 

^Alexandria Herald, June 13, 1825. 



1830] THE SOUTH 53 

far up the river-courses that the reapportionment 
preserved the control in the hands of slave-holding 
counties.^ A similar course was followed by Vir- 
ginia in the convention of 1829-1830, when, after a 
long struggle, a compromise was adopted, by which 
the balance of power in the state legislature was 
transferred to the counties of the Piedmont and the 
Valley.^ Here slave-holding had progressed so far 
that the interest of those counties was affiliated 
rather with the coast than with the trans-Alleghany 
country. West Virginia remained a discontented 
area until her independent statehood in the days 
of the Civil War. These transmontane counties of 
Virginia were, in their political activity during our 
period, rather to be reckoned with the west than 
with the south. 

Thus the southern seaboard experienced the need 
of protecting the interests of its slave-holding plant- 
ers against the free democracy of the interior of 
the south itself, and learned how to safeguard the 
minority. This experience was now to serve the 
south, when, having attained unity by the spread 
of slavery into the interior, it found itself as a sec- 
tion in the same relation to the Union which the 
slave-holding tidewater area had held towards the 
more populous up-country of the south. 



* Calhoun, Works, I., 401; Schaper, Sectionalism and Repre- 
sentation in S. C, in Am. Hist. Assoc, Report 1900, 1., 434-437, 

' Va. Const. Conv., Debates (1829-1830); Chandler, Repre- 
sentation in Fa., in Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies, XIV., 286-298. 



54 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

The unification of the section is one of the most 
important features of the period. Not only had the 
south been divided into opposing areas, as we have 
seen, but even its population was far from homo- 
geneous. By the period of this volume, however, 
English, French-Huguenots, Scotch-Irish, and Ger- 
mans had become assimilated into one people, and 
the negroes, who in 1830 in the South Atlantic 
states numbered over a million and a half in a white 
population of not much over two millions, were dif- 
fusing themselves throughout the area of the section 
except in West Virginia and the mountains. Con- 
temporaneously the pioneer farming type of the inte- 
rior of the section was replaced by the planter type.* 

As cotton-planting and slave-holding advanced 
into the interior counties of the old southern states, 
the free farmers were obliged either to change to the 
plantation economy and buy slaves, or to sell their 
lands and migrate. Large numbers of them, par- 
ticularly in the Carolinas, were Quakers or Baptists, 
whose religious scruples combined with their agricult- 
ural habits to make this change obnoxious. This 
upland country, too distant from the sea -shore to 
permit a satisfactory market, was a hive from which 
pioneers earlier passed into Kentucky and Tennes- 
see, until those states had become populous common- 
wealths. Now the exodus was increased by this 
later colonization.^ The Ohio was crossed, the Mis- 

' Nilcs' Register, XXI., 132; cf. p. 55 below. 
' See chap. v. below. 



1830] THE SOUTH 55 

souri ascended, and the streams that flowed to the 
Gulf were followed by movers away from the regions 
that were undergoing this social and economic re- 
construction. 

This industrial revolution was effective in different 
degrees in the different states. Comparatively few 
of Virginia's slaves, which by 1830 numbered nearly 
half a million, were found in her trans-Alleghany 
counties, but the Shenandoah Valley was receiving 
slaves and changing to the plantation type. In 
North Carolina the slave population of nearly two 
hundred and fifty thousand, at the same date, had 
spread well into the interior, but cotton did not 
achieve the position there which it held farther 
south. The interior farmers worked small farms of 
wheat and corn, laboring side by side with their 
negro slaves in the fields.* South Carolina had over 
three hundred thousand slaves — more than a ma- 
jority of her population — and the black belt ex- 
tended to the interior. Georgia's slaves, amoimting 
to over two hundred thousand, somewhat less than 
half her population, steadily advanced from the 
coast and the Savannah River towards the cotton- 
lands of the interior, pushing before them the less 
prosperous farmers, who found new homes to the 
north or south of the cotton-belt or migrated to the 
southwestern frontier.^ Here, as in North Carolina, 

' Bassett, Slavery in N. C, in Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies, 
XVII., 324, 399. 

' Phillips, Georgia and State Rights, in Am. Hist. Assoc, Re- 
port 1901, II-. 106. 



56 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

the planters in the interior of the state frequently 
followed the plough or encouraged their slaves by 
wielding the hoe.^ 

Thus this process of economic transformation 
passed from the coast towards the mountain barrier, 
gradually eliminating the inharmonious elements 
and steadily tending to produce a solidarity of inter- 
ests. The south as a whole was becoming, for the 
first time since colonial days, a staple-producing 
region; and, as diversified farming declined, the 
region tended to become dependent for its supplies 
of meat products, horses, and mules, and even hay 
and cereals, upon the north and west. 

The westward migration of its people checked the 
growth of the south. It had colonized the new 
west at the same time that the middle region had 
been rapidly growing in population, and the result 
was that the proud states of the southern seaboard 
were reduced to numerical inferiority. Like New 
England, it was an almost stationary section. From 
1820 to 1830 the states of this group gained little 
more than half a million souls, hardly more than 
the increase of the single state of New York. Vir- 
ginia, with a population of over a million, increased 
but 13.7 per cent., and the Carolinas only 15.5 per 
cent. In the next decade these tendencies were 
even more clearly shown, for Virginia and the Caro- 
linas then gained but little more than 2 per cent. 

' Phillips, Georgia and State Rights, in Am. Hist. Assoc, Re- 
port 1901, II., 107. 



1830] THE SOUTH 57 

Georgia alone showed rapid increase. At the be- 
ginning of the decade the Indians still held all of 
the territory west of Macon, at the centre of the 
state, with the exception of two tiers of counties 
along the southern border; and, when these lands 
were opened towards the close of the decade, they 
were occupied by a rush of settlement similar to 
the occupation of Oklahoma and Indian Territory 
in our own day. What Maine was to New Eng- 
land, that Georgia was to the southern seaboard, 
with the difference that it was deeply touched by 
influences characteristically western. Because of 
the traits of her leaders, and the rude, aggressive 
policy of her people, Georgia belonged at least as 
much to the west as to the south. From colonial 
times the Georgia settlers had been engaged in an 
almost incessant struggle against the savages on 
her border, and had the instincts of a frontier so- 
ciety.* 

From 1800 to 1830, throughout the tidewater 
region, there were clear evidences of decline. As 
the movement of capital and population towards the 
interior went on, wealth was drained from the coast; 
and, as time passed, the competition of the fertile 
and low-priced lands of the Gulf basin proved too 
strong for the outworn lands even of the interior of 
the south. Under the wasteful system of tobacco 
and cotton culture, without replenishment of the 

^ Ibid., II., 88; hongstTeet, Georgia Scenes; Gilmer , Sketches; 
Miss. Hist. Soc, Publications, VIII., 443. 



58 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

soil, the staple areas would, in any case, have de- 
clined in value. Even the corn and wheat lands 
were exhausted by unscientific farming.* Writing in 
1814 to Josiah Quincy,^ John Randolph of Roanoke 
lamented the decline of the seaboard planters. He 
declared that the region was now sunk in obscurity : 
what enterprise or capital there was in the country 
had retired westward; deer and wild turkeys were 
not so plentiful anywhere in Kentucky as near the 
site of the ancient Virginia capital, Williamsburg. 
In the Virginia convention of 1829, Mr. Mercer esti- 
mated that in 181 7 land values in Virginia aggre- 
gated two hundred and six million dollars, and 
negroes averaged three hundred dollars, while in 
1829 the land values did not surpass ninety millions, 
and slaves had fallen in value to one hundred and 
fifty dollars.' 

In a speech in the Virginia House of Delegates, 
in 1832, Thomas Marshall* asserted that the whole 
agricultural product of Virginia did not exceed in 
value the exports of eighty or ninety years before, 
when it contained not one-sixth of the population. 
In his judgment, the greater proportion of the larger 
plantations, with from fifty to one hundred slaves, 



• Gooch, Prize Essay on Agriculture in Va., in Lynchburg 
Virginian, July 4, 1833; Martin, Gazetteer of Va., 99, 100. 

' E. Quincy, Josiah Quincy, 353. 

' Va. Const. Conv., Debates (1829-1830), 178; Collins, Domes- 
tic Slave Trade, 26. 

* Collins, Domestic Slave Trade, 24, cited from Richmond En- 
quirer, February, 2, 1832. 



1830J THE SOUTH 59 

brought the proprietors into debt, and rarely did a 
plantation yield one and a half per cent, profit on 
the capital. So great had become the depression 
that Randolph prophesied that the time was coming 
when the masters would run away from the slaves 
and be advertised by them in the public papers.* 

It was in this period that Thomas Jefferson fell 
into such financial embarrassments that he was 
obliged to request of the legislature of Virginia per- 
mission to dispose of property by lottery to pay his 
debts, and that a subscription was taken up to 
relieve his distress.^ At the same time, Madison, 
having vainly tried to get a loan from the United 
States Bank, was forced to dispose of some of his 
lands and stocks ; ^ and Monroe, at the close of his 
term of office, found himself financially ruined. He 
gave up Oak Hill and spent his declining years with 
his son-in-law in New York City. The old-time tide- 
water mansions, where, in an earlier day, everybody 
kept open house, gradually fell into decay. 

Sad indeed was the spectacle of Virginia's ancient 
aristocracy. It had never been a luxurious society. 
The very wealthy planters, with vast cultivated 
estates and pretentious homes, were in the minority. 
For the most part, the houses were moderate frame 
structures, set at intervals of a mile or so apart, 
often in parklike grounds, with long avenues of 
trees. The plantation was a little world in itself. 

* Collins, Domestic Slave Trade, 26. 

' 'R.andaW. Jefferson, III., 527, 561. ' Hunt, Ilfadison, 380. 



6o RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

Here was made much of the clothing for the slaves, 
and the mistress of the plantation supervised the 
spinning and weaving. Leather was tanned on the 
place, and blacksmithing, wood-working, and other 
industries were carried on, often under the direc- 
tion of white mechanics. The planter and his wife 
commonly had the care of the black families whom 
they possessed, looked after them when they were 
sick, saw to their daily rations, arranged marriages, 
and determined the daily tasks of the plantation. 
The abundant hospitality between neighbors gave 
opportunity for social cultivation, and politics was 
a favorite subject of conversation. 

The leading planters served as justices of the peace, 
but they were not dependent for their selection upon 
the popular vote. Appointed by the governor on 
nomination of the court itself, they constituted a 
kind of close corporation, exercising local judicial, 
legislative, and executive functions. The sheriff 
was appointed by the governor from three justices 
of the peace recommended by the court, and the 
court itself appointed the county clerk. Thus the 
county government of Virginia was distinctly aristo- 
cratic. County-court day served as an opportunity 
for bringing together the freeholders, who included 
not only the larger planters, but the small farmers 
and the poor whites — hangers-on of the greater 
plantations. Almost no large cities were found in 
Virginia. The court-house was hardly more than a 
meeting-place for the rural population. Here farm- 



1830] THE SOUTH 61 

ers exchanged their goods, traded horses, often 
fought, and listened to the stump speeches of the 
orators.* 

Such were, in the main, the characteristics of that 
homespun plantation aristocracy which, through 
the Virginia dynasty, had ruled the nation in the 
days of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Mon- 
roe. As their lands declined in value, they naturally 
sought for an explanation and a remedy.^ The ex- 
planation was found most commonly in the charge 
that the protective tariff was destroying the pros- 
perity of the south ; and in reaction they turned to 
demand the old days of Jeffersonian rural simplicity, 
under the guardianship of state rights and a strict 
construction of the Constitution. Madison in vain 
laid the fall in land values in Virginia to the uncer- 
tainty and low prices of the crops, to the quantity 
of land thrown on the market, and the attractions 
of the cheaper and better lands beyond the moun- 
tains.* 

Others called attention to the fact that the semi- 
annual migration towards the west and southwest, 
which swept off enterprising portions of the people 
and much of the capital and movable property of 
the state, also kept down the price of land by the 
great quantities thereby thrown into the market. 
Instead of applying a system of scientific farming 

^ Johnson, Robert Lewis Dabney, 14-24; Smedes, yl Southern 
Planter, 34-37. ^Randall, Jefferson, III., 532. 

^Madison, Writings (ed. of 1865), III., 614. 



62 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

and replenishment of the soil, there was a tendency 
for the planters who remained to get into debt in 
order to add to their possessions the farms which 
were offered for sale by the movers. Thus there was 
a flow of wealth towards the west to pay for these 
new purchases. The overgrown plantations soon be- 
gan to look tattered and almost desolate. "Galled 
and gullied hill -sides and sedgy, briary fields"* 
showed themselves in every direction. Finally the 
planter found himself obliged to part with some of 
his slaves, in response to the demand from the new 
cotton -fields; or to migrate himself, with his caravan 
of negroes, to open a new home in the Gulf region. 
During the period of this survey the price for prime 
field-hands in Georgia averaged a little over seven 
hundred dollars.^ If the estimate of one hundred 
and fifty dollars for negroes sold in family lots in 
Virginia is correct, it is clear that economic laws 
would bring about a condition where Virginia's re- 
sources would in part depend upon her supply of 
slaves to the cotton-belt.^ It is clear, also, that the 
Old Dominion had passed the apogee of her political 
power. 

It was not only the planters of Virginia that suf- 
fered in this period of change. As the more ex- 
tensive and fertile cotton-fields of the new states 
of the southwest opened, North Carolina and even 

• Lynchburg Virginian, July 4, 1833. 

» Phillips, in Pol. Set. Quart., XX., 267. 

* Collins, Domestic .Slave Trade, 42-46. 



1830] THE SOUTH 63 

South Carolina found themselves embarrassed. 
With the fall in cotton prices, already mentioned, it 
became increasingly necessary to possess the advan- 
tages of large estates and unexhausted soils, in or- 
der to extract a profit from this cultivation. From 
South Carolina there came a protest more vehe- 
ment and aggressive than that of the discontented 
classes of Virginia. Already the indigo plantation 
had ceased to be profitable and the rice planters no 
longer held their old prosperity. 

Charleston was peculiarly suited to lead in a 
movement of revolt. It was the one important 
centre of real city life of the seaboard south of 
Baltimore. Here every February the planters gath- 
ered from their plantations, thirty to one hundred 
and fifty miles away, for a month in their town 
houses. At this season, races, social gayeties, and po- 
litical conferences vied with one another in engaging 
the attention of the planters. Returning to their 
plantations in the early spring, they remained until 
June, when considerations of health compelled them 
either again to return to the city, to visit the moun- 
tains, or to go to such watering-places as Saratoga 
in New York. Here again they talked politics and 
mingled with political leaders of the north. It was 
not until the fall that they were able to return again 
to their estates.^ Thus South Carolina, affording a 
combination of plantation life with the social inter- 
course of the city, gave peculiar opportunities for 

'Hodgson, Letters from North America, I., 50. 

VOL. XIV. — 6 



\ 



64 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1830 

exchanging ideas and consolidating the sentiment of 
her leaders. 

The condition of South Carolina was doubtless 
exaggerated by Hayne, in his speech in the Senate 
in 1832, when he characterized it as "not merely one 
of unexampled depression, but of great and all-per- 
vading distress," with "the mournful evidence of 
premature decay," "merchants bankrupt or driven 
away — their capital simk or transferred to other 
pursuits — our shipyards broken up— our ships all 
sold!" "If," said he, "we fly from the city to the 
country, what do we there behold ? Fields abandon- 
ed ; the hospitable mansions of our fathers deserted ; 
agriculture drooping; our slaves, like their masters, 
working harder, and faring worse ; the planter striv- 
ing with unavailing efforts to avert the ruin which is 
before him." He drew a sad picture of the once 
thriving planter, reduced to despair, gathering up the 
small remnants of his broken fortune, and, with his 
wife and little ones, tearing himself from the scenes 
of his childhood and the bones of his ancestors to 
seek in the wilderness the reward for his industry of 
which the policy of Congress had deprived him.* 

The genius of the south expressed itself most 
clearly in the field of politics. If the democratic 
middle region could show a multitude of clever 
politicians, the aristocratic south possessed an 

' Register of Debates, VIII., pt. i., 80; cf. Houston, Nullification 
in S. C, 46; McDuffie, in Register of Debates, i8th Cong., 2 Sess., 
253- 



1832] THE SOUTH 65 

abundance of leaders bold in political initiative and 
masterful in their ability to use the talents of their 
northern allies. When the Missouri question was 
debated, John Quincy Adams remarked "that if 
institutions are to be judged by their results in the 
composition of the councils of this Union, the slave- 
holders are much more ably represented than the 
simple freemen." ^ 

The southern statesmen fall into two classes. On 
the one side was the Virginia group, now for the most 
part old men, rich in the honors of the nation, still 
influential, but, except for Monroe, no longer direct- 
ing party policy. Jefferson and Madison were in 
retirement in their old age ; Marshall, as chief -justice, 
was continuing his career as the expounder of the 
Constitution in accordance with Federalist ideals; 
John Randolph, his old eccentricities increased by 
disease and intemperance, remained to proclaim the 
extreme doctrines of southern dissent and to impale 
his adversaries with javelins of flashing wit. A 
maker of phrases which stung and festered, he was 
still capable of influencing public opinion somewhat 
in the same way as are the cartoonists of modern 
times. But "his course through life had been like 
that of the arrow which Alcestes shot to heaven, 
which effected nothing useful, though it left a long 
stream of light behind it." ^ In North Carolina, the 
venerable Macon remained to protest like a later 

• Adams, Memoirs, IV., 506. 

' Lynchburg Virginian, May 9, 1833. 



66 



RISE OF THE NEW WEST 



[1820 



Cato against the tendencies of the times and to 
raise a warning voice to his fellow slave-holders 
against national consolidation. 

In the course of this decade, the effective lead- 
ership of the south fell to Calhoun and Crawford.* 
About these statesmen were grouped energetic and 
able men like Hayne, McDuffie, and Hamilton of 
South Carolina, and Cobb and Forsyth of Georgia 
— men who sometimes pushed their leaders on in 
a sectional path which the latter 's caution or per- 
sonal ambitions made them reluctant to tread. 
Nor must it be forgotten that early in the decade 
the south lost two of her greatest statesmen, the 
wise and moderate Lowndes, of South Carolina, 
and Pinkney, the brilliant Maryland orator. In 
the course of the ten years which we are to sketch, 
the influence of economic change within this sec- 
tion transformed the South Carolinians from warm 
supporters of a liberal national policy into the 
straitest of the sect of state - sovereignty advo- 
cates, intent upon raising barriers against the flood 
of nationalism that threatened to overwhelm the 
south. In relating the changing policy of the 
southern political leaders, we shall again observe the 
progress and the effects of the economic transfor- 
mations which it has been the purpose of this chap- 
<"^-r to portray. 

* See chap. xi. below. 



CHAPTER V 

COLONIZATION OF THE WEST 
(1820-1830) 

THE rise of the new west was the most significant / 
fact in American history in the years imme- 
diately following the War of 181 2. Ever since the 
beginnings of colonization on the Atlantic coast a 
frontier of settlement had advanced, cutting into 
the forest, pushing back the Indian, and steadily 
widening the area of civilization in its rear.* There 
had been a west even in early colonial days; but 
then it lay close to the coast. By the middle of 
the eighteenth century the west was to be found 
beyond tide-water, advancing towards the Alleghany 
Mountains. When this barrier was crossed and the 
lands on the other side of the mountains were won, in 
the days of the Revolution, a new and greater west, 
more influential on the nation's destiny, was created.' 

'Three articles by F. J. Turner, viz.: "Significance of the 
Frontier in American History," in Am. Hist. Assoc, Report 
1893, 199-227; "Problem of the West," in "Atlantic Monthly, 
LXXVIII., 289; "Contributions of the West to American De- 
mocracy," tfetd., XCI., 83. 

* Howard, Preliminaries of Revolution, chap, xiii.; Van Tyne, 
Am. Revolution, chap, xv.; McLaughlin, Confederation and Con- 
stitution, chap. viii. {Am. Nation, VIII., IX., X.). 



68 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

The men of the "Western Waters" or the "West- 
ern World," as they loved to call themselves, devel- 
oped under conditions of separation from the older 
settlements and from Europe. The lands, practi- 
cally free, in this vast area not only attracted the 
settler, but furnished opportunity for all men to hew 
out their own careers. The wilderness ever opened 
a gate of escape to the poor, the discontented, and 
the oppressed. If social conditions tended to crys- 
tallize in the east, beyond the Alleghanies there 
was freedom. Grappling with new problems, under 
these conditions, the society that spread into this 
region developed inventiveness and resourcefulness; 
the restraints of custom were broken, and new activi- 
ties, new lines of growth, new institutions were pro- 
duced. Mr. Bryce has well declared that " the West 
is the mo€t American part of America. . . . What 
Europe is to Asia, what England is to the rest of 
Europe, what America is to England, that the 
Western States and Territories are to the Atlantic 
States."' The American spirit — the traits that 
have come to be recognized as the most characteris- 
tic — was developed in the new commonwealths that 
sprang into life beyond the seaboard. In these new 
western lands Americans achieved a boldness of 
conception of the country's destiny and democracy. 
The ideal of the west was its emphasis upon the 
worth and possibilities of the common man, its 
belief in the right of every man to rise to the full 

* Bryce, American Commonwealth (ed. of 1895), II., 830. 



1830] WESTERN COLONIZATION 69 

measure of his own nature, under conditions of 
social mobility. Western democracy was no theo- 
rist's dream. It came, stark and strong and full of 
life, from the American forest.^ 

The time had now come when this section was to 
make itself felt as a dominant force in American 
Hfe. Already it had shown its influence upon the 
older sections. By its competition, by its attrac- 
tions for settlers, it reacted on the east and gave 
added impulse to the democratic movement in New 
England and New York. The struggle of Balti- 
more, New York City, and Philadelphia for the 
rising commerce of the interior was a potent factor 
in the development of the middle region. In the 
south the spread of the cotton-plant and the new 
form which slavery took were phases of the west- 
ward movement of the plantation. The discontent 
of the old south is partly explained by the migra- 
tion of her citizens to the west and by the compe- 
tition of her colonists in the lands beyond the Alle- 
ghanies. The future of the south lay in its affiliation 
to the Cotton Kingdom of the lower states which 
were rising on the plains of the Gulf of Mexico. 

Rightly to understand the power which the new 
west was to exert upon the economic and political 
life of the nation in the years between 1820 and 
1830, it is necessary to consider somewhat fully the 

* F. J. Turner, " Contributions of the West to American De- 
mocracy." in Atlantic Monthly, XCI., 83, and "The Middle 
West," in International Monthly, IV., 794. 



70 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [i8n 

statistics of growth in western population and in- 
dustry. 

The western states ranked with the middle region 
and the south in respect to population. Between 
1 812 and 1 82 1 six new western commonwealths were 
added to the Union: Louisiana (181 2), Indiana 
(1816), Mississippi (1817), Illinois (1818), Alabama 
(18 1 9), and Missouri (1821). In the decade from 
1820 to 1830, these states, with their older sisters, 
Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio, increased their 
population from 2,217,000 to nearly 3,700,000, a 
gain of about a million and a half in the decade. 
The percentages of increase in these new communi- 
ties tell a striking story. Even the older states of 
the group grew steadily. Kentucky, with 22 per 
cent., Louisiana, with 41, and Tennessee and Ohio, 
each with 61, were increasing much faster than New 
England and the south, outside of Maine and 
Georgia. But for the newer communities the per- 
centages of gain are still more significant: Missis- 
sippi, 81 per cent.; Alabama, 142; Indiana, 133; 
and Illinois, 185. The population of Ohio, which 
hardly more than a generation before was "fresh, 
untouched, unbounded, magnificent wilderness," * 
was now nearly a million, surpassing the combined 
population of Massachusetts and Connecticut. 

A new section had arisen and was growing at such 
a rate that a description of it in any single year 
would be falsified before it could be published. Nor 

'Webster, Writings (National ed), V., 252. 



1830] WESTERN COLONIZATION 71 

is the whole strength of the western element re- 
vealed by these figures. In order to estimate the 
weight of the western population in 1830, we must 
add six hundred thousand souls in the western half 
of New York, three hundred thousand in the inte- 
rior counties of Pennsylvania, and over two hun- 
dred thousand in the trans- Alleghany counties of 
Virginia, making an aggregate of four million six 
hundred thousand. Fully to reckon the forces of 
backwoods democracy, moreover, we should include 
a large fraction of the interior population of Maine, 
New Hampshire, and Vermont, North Carolina, and 
Georgia, and northern New York. All of these re- 
gions were to be influenced by the ideals of demo- 
cratic rule which were springing up in the Missis- 
sippi Valley. 

In voting-power the western states alone — to say 
nothing of the interior districts of the older states — 
were even more important than the figures for popu- 
lation indicate. The west itself had, under the ap- 
portionment of 1822, forty-seven out of the two 
hundred and thirteen members of the House of 
Representatives, while in the Senate its representa- 
tion was eighteen out of forty -eight — more than that 
of any other section. Clearly, here was a region to 
be reckoned with; its economic interests, its ideals, 
and its political leaders were certain to have a power- 
ful, if not a controlling, voice in the councils of the 
nation. 

At the close of the War of 181 2 the west had much 



72 



RISE OF THE NEW WEST 



[i8iS 



homogeneity. Parts of Kentucky, Tennessee, and 
Ohio had been settled so many years that they no 
longer presented typical western conditions; but 
in most of its area the west then was occupied by 
pioneer farmers and stock-raisers, eking out their 
larder and getting peltries by hunting, and raising 
only a small surplus for market. By 1830, how- 
ever, industrial differentiation between the northern 
and southern portions of the Mississippi Valley was 
clearly marked. The northwest was changing to a 
land of farmers and town-builders, anxious for a 
market for their grain and cattle; while the south- 
west was becoming increasingly a cotton-raising sec- 
tion, swayed by the same impulses in respect to 
staple exports as those which governed the southern 
seaboard. Economically, the northern portion of 
the valley tended to connect itself with the middle 
states, while the southern portion came into increas- 
ingly intimate connection with the south. Never- 
theless, it would be a radical mistake not to deal 
with the west as a separate region, for, with all these 
differences within itself, it possessed a fimdamental 
unity in its social structure and its democratic ideals, 
and at times, in no uncertain way, it showed a con- 
sciousness of its separate existence. 

In occupying the Mississippi Valley the American 
people colonized a region far surpassing in area the 
territory of the old thirteen states. The movement 
was, indeed , but the continuation of the advance of 
the frontier which had begun in the earliest days of 



1830] WESTERN COLONIZATION 73 

American colonization. The existence of a great 
body of land, offered at so low a price as to be prac- 
tically free, inevitably drew population towards the 
west. When wild lands sold ^or two dollars an acre, 
and, indeed, could be occupied by squatters almost 
without molestation, it was certain that settlers 
would seek them instead of paying twenty to fifty 
dollars an acre for farms that lay not much farther 
to the east — particularly when the western lands 
were more fertile. The introduction of the steam- 
boat on the western waters in 181 1, moreover, 
soon revolutionized transportation conditions in the 
West.* At the beginning of the period of which we 
are treating, steamers were ascending the Mississippi 
and the Missouri, as well as the Ohio and its tribu- 
taries. Between the close of the War of 181 2 and 
1830, moreover, the Indian title was extinguished 
to vast regions in the west. Half of Michigan was 
opened to settlement; the northwestern quarter of 
Ohio was freed ; in Indiana and Illinois (more than 
half of which had been Indian country prior to 181 6) 
all but a comparatively small region of undesired 
prairie lands south of Lake Michigan was ceded; 
almost the whole state of Missouri was freed from 
its Indian title ; and, in the Gulf region, at the close 
of the decade, the Indians held but two isolated 

1 Flint, Letters, 260; Monette, in Miss. Hist. Soc, Publications, 
VII., 503; Hall, Statistics of tlie West, 236, 247; Lloyd, Steam- 
boat Disasters (1853), 32, 40-45; Preble, Steam Navigation, 64; 
McMaster, United States, IV., 402; Chittenden, Early Steamboat 
Navigation on the Missouri, chap. ix. 



74 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1810 

'' islands of territory, one in western Georgia and 
eastern Alabama, and the other in northern and 
' central Mississippi. These ceded regions were the 
fruit of the victories of William Henry Harrison in 
I the northwest, and of Andrew Jackson in the Gulf 
region. They were, in effect, conquered provinces, 
just opened to colonization. 

The maps of the United States census, giving the 
distribution of population in 1810, 1820, and 1830,* 
exhibit clearly the effects of the defeat of the Indians, 
and show the areas that were occupied in these years. 
In 1 8 10 settlement beyond the mountains was al- 
most limited to a zone along the Ohio River and its 
tributaries, the Cumberland and the Tennessee. In 
the southwest, the vicinity of Mobile showed sparse 
settlement, chiefly survivals of the Spanish and Eng- 
lish occupation; and, along the fluvial lands of the 
eastern bank of the lower Mississippi, in the Natchez 
region, as well as in the old province of Louisiana, 
there was a considerable area occupied by planters. 

By 1820 the effects of the War of 181 2 and the 
rising tide of westward migration became manifest. 
Pioneers spread along the river-courses of the north- 
west well up to the Indian boundary. The zone 
of settlement along the Ohio ascended the Missouri, 
in the rush to the Boone's Lick country, towards 
the centre of the present state. From the settle- 
ments of middle Tennessee a pioneer farming area 

'See maps of population; compare U. S. Census of 1900, 
Statistical Atlas, plates 4, 5, 6. 



i53o] WESTERN COLONIZATION 75 

reached southward to connect with the settlements 
of Mobile, and the latter became conterminous with 
those of the lower Mississippi. 

By 1830 large portions of these Indian lands, 
which were ceded between 181 7 and 1829, received 
the same type of colonization. The unoccupied 
lands in Indiana and Illinois were prairie country, 
then deemed unsuited for settlement because of the 
lack of wood and drinking-water. It was the hard- 
woods that had been taken up in the northwest, 
and, for the most part, the tracts a little back from 
the unhealthful bottom-lands, but in close proxim- 
ity to the rivers, which were the only means of 
transportation before the building of good roads. 
A new island of settlement appeared in the north- 
western portion of Illinois and the adjacent regions 
of Wisconsin and Iowa, due to the opening of the 
lead-mines. Along the Missouri Valley and in the 
Gulf region the areas possessed in 1820 increased in 
density of population. Georgia spread her settlers 
into the Indian lands, which she had so recently 
secured by threatening a rupture with the United 
States.' 

Translated into terms of human activity, these 
shaded areas, encroaching on the blank spaces of the 
map, meant much for the history of the United 
States. Even in the northwest, which we shall first 
describe, they represent, in the main, the migration 

' MacDonald, Jacksonian Democracy {Am. Nation, XV.), 
chap. X. 



76 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

of southern people. New England, after the distress 
following the War of 181 2 and the hard winter of 
1816-1817, had sent many settlers into western 
New York and Ohio; the Western Reserve had in- 
creased in population by the immigration of Con- 
necticut people ; Pennsylvania and New Jersey had 
sent colonists to southern and central Ohio, with 
Cincinnati as the commercial centre. In Ohio the 
settlers of middle-state origin were decidedly more 
numerous than those from the south, and New 
England's share was distinctly smaller than that 
of the south. In the Ohio legislature in 1822 there 
were thirty-eight members of middle-state birth, 
thirty-three of southern (including Kentucky), and 
twenty-five of New England. But Kentucky and 
Tennessee (now sufficiently settled to need larger and 
cheaper farms for the rising generation), together 
with the up-country of the south, contributed the 
mass of the pioneer colonists to most of the Missis- 
sippi Valley prior to 1830.^ Of course, a large frac- 
tion of these came from the Scotch-Irish and Ger- 
man stock that in the first half of the eighteenth 
century passed from Pennsylvania along the Great 
Valley to the up-country of the south. Indiana, so 
late as 1850, showed but ten thousand natives of 

' See, for Ohio, Niles' Register, XXL, 368 (leg. session of 1822), 
and Nat. Republican, January 2, 1824; for Illinois in 1833, 
Western Monthly Magazine, I., 199; for Missouri convention of 
1820, Niles' Register, XVIII., 400; for Alabama in 1820, ibid., 
XX., 64. Local histories, travels, newspapers, and the census 
of 1850 support the text. 



1830] WESTERN COLONIZATION 77 

New England, and twice as many persons of 
southern as of middle states origin. In the his- 
tory of Indiana, North Carolina contributed a large 
fraction of the population, giving to it its "Hoo- 
sier" as well as much of its Quaker stock. Illi- 
nois in this period had but a sprinkling of New- 
Englanders, engaged in business in the little towns. 
The southern stock, including settlers from Ken- 
tucky and Tennessee, was the preponderant class. 
The Illinois legislature for 1833 contained fifty-eight 
from the south (including Kentucky and Tennessee), 
nineteen from the middle states, and only four from 
New England. Missouri's population was chiefly 
Kentuckians and Tennesseeans. 

The leaders of this southern element came, in 
considerable measure, from well-to-do classes, who 
migrated to improve their conditions in the freer 
opportunities of a new country. Land specula- 
tion, the opportunity of political preferment, and 
the advantages which these growing communities 
brought to practitioners of the law combined to 
attract men of this class. Many of them, as we shall 
see, brought their slaves with them, -under the sys- 
tems of indenture which made this possible. Mis- 
souri, especially, was sought by planters with their 
slaves. But it was the poorer whites, the more 
democratic, non-slaveholding element of the south, 
which furnished the great bulk of the settlers north 
of the Ohio. Prior to the close of the decade the 
same farmer type was in possession of large parts of 



78 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1816 

the Gulf region, whither, through the whole of our 
period, the slave-holding planters came in increasing 
numbers. 

Two of the families which left Kentucky for the 
newer country in these years will illustrate the 
movement. The Lincoln family * had reached that 
state by migration from the north with the stream 
of backwoodsmen which bore along with it the Cal- 
houns and the Boones. Abraham Lincoln was born 
in a hilly, barren portion of Kentucky in 1809. In 
181 6, when Lincoln was a boy of seven, his father, 
a poor carpenter, took his family across the Ohio on 
a raft, with a capital consisting of his kit of tools 
and several hundred gallons of whiskey. In Indiana 
he hewed a path into the forest to a new home in the 
southern part of the state, where for a year the family 
lived in a "half -faced camp," or open shed of poles, 
clearing their land. In the hardships of the pio- 
neer life Lincoln's mother died, as did many another 
frontier woman. In 1830 Lincoln was a tall, strap- 
ping youth, six feet four inches in height, able to 
sink his axe deeper than other men into the opposing 
forest. At that time his father moved to the San- 
gamon country of Illinois with the rush of land- 
seekers into that new and popular region. Near the 
home of Lincoln in Kentucky was born, in 1808, 
Jefferson Davis, ^ whose father, shortly before the War 

' Tarbell, Lincoln, I., chaps, i.-iv.; Hemdon, Lincoln, I., chaps, 
i.-iv.; Nicolay and Hay, Lincoln, I., chaps, i.-iii. 
' Mrs. Davis, Jefferson Davis, I., 5. 



i8i7] WESTERN COLONIZATION 79 

of 181 2, went with the stream of southward movers 
to Louisiana and then to Mississippi. Davis's broth- 
ers fought under Jackson in the War of 181 2, and 
the family became typical planters of the Gulf re- 
gion. 

Meanwhile, the roads that led to the Ohio Valley 
were followed by an increasing tide of settlers from 
the east. "Old America seems to be breaking up,, 
and moving westward," wrote Morris Birkbeck in 
181 7, as he passed on the National Road through 
Pennsylvania. " We are seldom out of sight, as we 
travel on this grand track, towards the Ohio, of 
family groups, behind and before us. ... A small 
waggon (so light that you might almost carry it, 
yet strong enough to bear a good load of bedding, 
utensils and provisions, and a swarm of young 
citizens, — and to sustain marvellous shocks in its 
passage over these rocky heights) with two small 
horses; sometimes a cow or two, comprises their 
all; excepting a little store of hard-earned cash 
for the land office of the district; where they may 
obtain a title for as many acres as they possess half- 
dollars, being one fourth of the purchase-money. 
The waggon has a tilt, or cover, made of a sheet,, 
or perhaps a blanket. The family are seen before, 
behind, or within the vehicle, according to the road 
or the weather, or perhaps the spirits of the party. 
... A cart and single horse frequently affords the 
means of transfer, sometimes a horse and pack- 
saddle. Often the back of the poor pilgrim bears 

VOL. XIV. — 7 



8o RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1815 

all his effects, and his wife follows, naked-footed, 
bending under the hopes of the family." * 

The southerners who came by land along the many 
bad roads through Tennessee and Kentucky usually 
travelled with heavy, long-bodied wagons, drawn 
by four or six horses.^ These family groups, crowd- 
ing roads and fords, marching towards the sun- 
set, with the canvas-covered wagon, ancestor of the 
prairie-schooner of the later times, were typical of 
the overland migration. The poorer classes travelled 
on foot, sometimes carrying their entire effects in a 
cart drawn by themselves.^ Those of more means 
took horses, cattle, and sheep, and sometimes sent 
their household goods by wagon or by steamboat 
up the Mississippi.'* 

The routes of travel to the western country were 
numerous.^ Prior to the opening of the Erie Canal 
the New England element either passed along the 
Mohawk and the Genesee turnpike to Lake Erie, 
or crossed the Hudson and followed the line of the 
Catskill turnpike to the headwaters of the Alle- 
gheny, or, by way of Boston, took ship to New York, 
Philadelphia, or Baltimore, in order to follow a more 
southerly route. In Pennsylvania the principal 
route was the old road which, in a general way, 

* Birkbeck, Notes on a Journey from Va. to III., 25, 26. 
^ Hist, of Grundy County, III., 149. 

' Niles' Register, XXL, 320. 

* Howells, Life in Ohio, 181 3-1840, 86 ; Jones, III. and the West, 
31; Hist, of Grundy County, III., 149. 

* See map, page 2 2fi. 



1830] WESTERN COLONIZATION 81 

followed the line that Forbes had cut in the French 
and Indian War from Philadelphia to Pittsburg by 
way of Lancaster and Bedford. By this time the 
road had been made a turnpike through a large por- 
tion of its course. From Baltimore the traveller 
followed a turnpike to Cumberland, on the Potomac, 
where began the old National Road across the 
mountains to Wheeling, on the Ohio, with branches 
leading to Pittsburg. This became one of the great 
arteries of western migration and commerce, con- 
necting, as it did at its eastern end, with the Shen- 
andoah Valley, and thus affording access to the 
Ohio for large areas of Virginia, Other routes lay 
through the passes of the Alleghanies, easily reached 
from the divide between the waters of North Caro- 
lina and of West Virginia. Saluda Gap, in north- 
western South Carolina, led the way to the great 
valley of eastern Tennessee. In Tennessee and Ken- 
tucky many routes passed to the Ohio in the re- 
gion of Cincinnati or Louisville. 

When the settler arrived at the waters of the 
Ohio, he either took a steamboat or placed his 
possessions on a flatboat, or ark, and floated down 
the river to his destination. From the upper waters 
of the Allegheny many emigrants took advantage of 
the lumber-rafts, which were constructed from the 
pine forests of southwestern New York, to float to 
the Ohio with themselves and their belongings. 
With the advent of the steamboat these older 
modes of navigation were, to a considerable extent, 

VOL. XIV. — 6 



82 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

superseded. But navigation on the Great Lakes 
had not sufficiently advanced to afford opportunity 
for any considerable movement of settlement, by 
this route, beyond Lake Erie. 

In the course of the decade the cost of reaching 
the west varied greatly with the decrease in the 
transportation rates brought about by the competi- 
tion of the Erie Canal, the improvement of the turn- 
pikes, and the development of steamboat naviga- 
tion. The expense of the long ov^^rland journey 
from New England, prior to the opening of the Erie 
Canal, made it extremely difficult for those without 
any capital to reach the west. The stage rates on 
the Pennsylvania turnpike and the old National 
Road, prior to the opening of the Erie Canal, were 
about five or six dollars a hundred -weight from 
Philadelphia or Baltimore to the Ohio River; the 
individual was regarded as so much freight.* To 
most of the movers, who drove their own teams and 
camped by the wayside, however, the actual expense 
was simply that of providing food for themselves 
and their horses on the road. The cost of moving 
by land a few years later is illustrated by the case 
of a Maryland family, consisting of fifteen persons, 
of whom five were slaves. They travelled about 
twenty miles a day, with a four-horse wagon, three 
hundred miles, to Wheeling, at an expense of 
seventy-five dollars.^ The expense of travelling by 

' Evans, Pedestrious Tour, 145. 
^Niles' Register, XLVIIL, 242. 



1830] WESTERN COLONIZATION 83 

stage and steamboat from Philadelphia to St. Louis 
at the close of the decade was about fifty-five dollars 
for one person ; or by steamboat from New Orleans 
to St. Louis, thirty dollars, including food and lodg- 
ing. For deck-passage, without food or lodging, the 
charge was only eight dollars.* In 1823 the cost of 
passage from Cincinnati to New Orleans by steam- 
boat was twenty-five dollars ; from New Orleans to 
Cincinnati, fifty dollars.^ In the early thirties one 
could go from New Orleans to Pittsburg, as cabin 
passenger, for from thirty-five to forty-five dollars.* 

' III. Monthly Magazine, II., 53. 
'Miles' Register, XXV., 95. 

* Emigrants' and Travellers' Guide through thg Valley »f ike 
Mississippi, 341. 



CHAPTER VI 

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF 

THE WEST 

(1820-1830) 

ARRIVED at the nearest point to his destina- 
i tion on the Ohio, the emigrant either cut out 
a road to his new home or pushed up some tribu- 
tary of that river in a keel-boat. If he was one of 
the poorer classes, he became a squatter on the 
public lands, trusting to find in the profits of his 
farming the means of paying for his land. Not un- 
commonly, after clearing the land, he sold his im- 
provements to the actual purchaser, under the 
customary usage or by pre-emption laws,^ With 
the money thus secured he would purchase new land 
in a remoter area, and thus establish himself as an 
independent land -owner. Under the credit system^ 
which existed at the opening of the period, the settler 
purchased his land in quantities of not less than one 
hundred and sixty acres at two dollars per acre, by 
a cash payment of fifty cents per acre and the rest in 

'Hall, Statistics of the West, 180; Kingdom, America, 56; 
Peck, New Guide for Emigrants to the West (1837), 1 19-132. 
' Emerick, Credit and the Public Domain. 



1830] WESTERN DEVELOPMENT 85 

instalments running over a period of four years ; but 
by the new law of 1820 the settler was permitted to 
buy as small a tract as eighty acres from the govern- 
ment at a minimum price of a dollar and a quarter 
per acre, without credit. The price of labor in the 
towns along the Ohio, coupled with the low cost of 
provisions, made it possible for even a poor day- 
laborer from the East to accumulate the necessary 
amount to make his land-purchase.* 

Having in this way settled down either as a 
squatter or as a land-owner, the pioneer proceeded 
to hew out a clearing in the midst of the forest.^ 
Commonly he had selected his lands with reference 
to the value of the soil, as indicated by the character 
of the hardwoods, but this meant that the labor of 
clearing was the more severe in good soil. Under 
the sturdy strokes of his axe the light of day was let 
into the little circle of cleared ground.^ With the 
aid of his neighbors, called together under the social 
attractions of a "raising," with its inevitable accom- 
paniment of whiskey and a "frolic," he erected his 
log-cabin. "America," wrote Birkbeck, "was bred 
in a cabin." * 

Having secured a foothold, the settler next pro- 
ceeded to "girdle" or "deaden" an additional forest 

* See, for example, Peck, New Guide for Emigrants to the West 
(1837), 107-134; Bradbury, Travels, 286. 

* Kingdom, America, 10, 54, 63; Flint, Letters, 206; McMaster, 
United States, V., 152-155; Howells, Life in Ohio, 115. 

' Hall, Statistics of the West, 98, loi, 145. 

* Birkbeck, Notes on Journey, 94. 



86 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

area, preparatory to his farming operations. This 
consisted in cutting a ring through the bark around 
the lower portion of the trunk, to prevent the sap 
from rising. In a short time the withered branches 
were ready for burning, and in the midst of the 
stumps the first crop of corn and vegetables was 
planted. Often the settler did not even burn the 
girdled trees, but planted his crop under the dead 
foliage. 

In regions nearer to the east, as in western New 
York, it was sometimes possible to repay a large 
portion of the cost of clearing by the sale of pot 
and pearl ashes extracted from the logs, which were 
brought together into huge piles for burning.* This 
was accomplished by a "log-rolling," under the 
united efforts of the neighbors, as in the case of the 
" raising. " More commonly in the west the logs were 
Vv^asted by burning, except such as were split into 
rails, which, laid one above another, made the zig- 
zag "worm-fences" for the protection of the fields 
of the pioneer. 

When a clearing was sold to a later comer, fifty or 
sixty dollars, in addition to the government price of 
land, was commonly charged for forty acres, enclosed 
and partly cleared.^ It was estimated that the cost 
of a farm of three hundred and twenty acres at the 
edge of the prairie in Illinois, at this time, would be 
divided as follows : for one hundred and sixty acres 

* Life of Tkurlow Weed (Autobiography), I., 11. 
•Kingdom, America, 10, 54. 



1830] WESTERN DEVELOPMENT 87 

of prairie, two hundred dollars; for fencing it into 
four forty-acre fields with rail-fences, one hundred 
and sixty dollars ; for breaking it up with a plough, 
two dollars per acre, or three hundred and twenty 
dollars; eighty acres of timber land and eighty 
acres of pasture prairie, two hundred dollars. Thus, 
with cabins, stables, etc., it cost a little over a 
thousand dollars to secure an improved farm of three 
hundred and twenty acres. ^ But the mass of the 
early settlers were too poor to afford such an outlay, 
and were either squatters within a little clearing, or 
owners of eighty acres, which they hoped to increase 
by subsequent purchase. Since they worked with 
the labor of their own hands and that of their sons, 
the cash outlay was practically limited to the 
original cost of the lands and articles of husbandry. 
The cost of an Indiana farm of eighty acres of 
land, with two horses, two or three cows, a few hogs 
and sheep, and farming utensils, was estimated at 
about four hundred dollars. 

The peculiar skill required of the axeman who 
entered the hardwood forests, together with readi- 
ness to undergo the privations of the life, made the 
backwoodsman in a sense an expert engaged in a 
special calling.^ Frequently he was the descendant 

•J. M. Peck, Guide for Emigrants (1831), 183-188; cf. Birk- 
beck (London, 1818), Letters, 45, 46, 69-73; S. H. Collins, Emi- 
grant's Guide; Tanner (publisher), View of the Valley of the Miss. 
(1834), 232; J. Woods, Two Years' Residence, 146, 172. 

'J. Hall, Statistics of the West, loi; cf. Chastellux, Travels in 
North America (London, 1787), L, 44. 



88 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

of generations of pioneers, who, on successive fron- 
tiers, from the neighborhood of the Atlantic coast 
towards the interior, had cut and burned the forest, 
fought the Indians, and pushed forward the line of 
civilization. He bore the marks of the struggle in 
his face, made sallow by living in the shade of the 
forest, "shut from the common air," ^ and in a con- 
stitution often racked by malarial fever. Dirt and 
squalor were too frequently found in the squatter's 
cabin, and education and the refinements of life 
were denied to him. Often shiftless and indolent, 
in the intervals between his tasks of forest-felling 
he was fonder of hunting than of a settled agricult- 
ural life. With his rifle he eked out his sustenance, 
and the peltries furnished him a little ready cash. 
His few cattle grazed in the surrounding forest, and 
his hogs fed on its mast. 

The backwoodsman of this type represented the 
outer edge of the advance of civilization. Where 
settlement was closer, co-operative activity possible, 
and little villages, with the mill and retail stores, 
existed, conditions of life were ameliorated, and a 
better type of pioneer was found. Into such regions 
circuit-riders and wandering preachers carried the 
beginnings of church organization, and schools were 
started. But the frontiersmen proper constituted a 
moving class, ever ready to sell out their clearings in 

* Birkbeck, Notes on Journey, 105-114. 

' Babcock, Fc^ty Years of Pioneer Life ("Journals and Cor- 
respondence of J. M. Peck"), loi. 



1830] WESTERN DEVELOPMENT 89 

order to press on to a new frontier, where game more 
abounded, soil was reported to be better, and where 
the forest furnished a welcome retreat from the un- 
congenial encroachments of civilization. If, how- 
ever, he was thrifty and forehanded, the backwoods- 
man remained on his clearing, improving his farm 
and sharing in the change from wilderness life. 

Behind the type of the backwoodsman came the 
type of the pioneer farmer. Equipped with a little 
capital, he often, as we have seen, purchased the 
clearing, and thus avoided some of the initial hard- 
ships of pioneer life. In the course of a few years, 
as saw-mills were erected, frame-houses took the 
place of the log-cabins ; the rough clearing, w4th its 
stumps, gave way to well -tilled fields; orchards 
were planted ; live-stock roamed over the enlarged 
clearing; and an agricultural surplus was ready for 
export. Soon the adventurous speculator offered 
corner lots in a new town-site, and the rude begin- 
nings of a city were seen. 

Thus western occupation advanced in a series of 
weaves : ^ the Indian was sought by the fur-trader ; the 
fur-trader was followed by the frontiersman, whose 
live-stock exploited the natural grasses and the 
acorns of the forest; next came the wave of primi- 
tive agriculture, followed by more intensive farming 

'J. M. Peck, New Guide to the West (Cincinnati, 1848), chap, 
iv.; T. Flint, Geography and Hist, of the Western States, 350 
et seq.; J. Flint, Letters from America, 206; cf. Turner, Signifi- 
cance of the Frontier in American History, in Am. Hist. Assoc, 
Report i8q3, p. 214; McMaster, United States, V., 152-160. 



90 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

and city life. All the stages of social development 
went on under the eye of the traveller as he passed 
from the frontier towards the east. Such were the 
forces which were steadily pushing their way into 
the American wilderness, as they had pushed for 
generations. 

While thus the frontier folk spread north of the 
Ohio and up the Missouri, a different movement was 
in progress in the Gulf region of the west. In the 
beginning precisely the same type of occupation was 
to be seen : the poorer classes of southern emigrants 
cut out their clearings along rivers that flowed to 
the Gulf and to the lower Mississippi, and, with the 
opening of this decade, went in increasing numbers 
into Texas, where enterprising Americans secured 
concessions from the Mexican government.* 

Almost all of the most recently occupied area was 
but thinly settled. It represented the movement of 
the backwoodsman, with axe and rifle, advancing to 
the conquest of the forest. But closer to the old 
settlements a more highly developed agriculture was 
to be seen. Hodgson, in 1821, describes plantations 
in northern Alabama in lands ceded by the Indians 
in 181 8. Though settled less than two years, there 
were within a few miles five schools and four places 
of worship. One plantation had one hundred acres 



•Garrison, Texas, chaps, xiii., xiv.; Wooten (editor), Com- 
prehensive Hist, of Texas, I., chaps, viii., ix.; Texas State 
Hist. Assoc, Quarterly, VII., ag, 289; Bugbee. "Texas Fron- 
tier," in Southern Hist. Assoc, Publications, IV., 106. 



1830] WESTERN DEVELOPMENT 91 

in cotton and one hundred and ten in corn, although 
a year and a half before it was wilderness/ 

But while this population of log -cabin pioneers 
was entering the Gulf plains, caravans of slave-hold- 
ing planters were advancing from the seaboard to 
the occupation of the cotton-lands of the same region. 
As the free farmers of the interior had been replaced 
in the upland country of the south by the slave- 
holding planters, so now the frontiersmen of the 
southwest were pushed back from the more fertile 
lands into the pine hills and barrens. Not only was 
the pioneer unable to refuse the higher price which 
was offered him for his clearing, but, in the competi- 
tive bidding of the public land sales, ^ the wealthier 
planter secured the desirable soils. Social forces 
worked to the same end. When the pioneer invited 
his slave-holding neighbor to a "raising," it grated 
on his sense of the fitness of things to have the guest 
appear with gloves, directing the gang of slaves 
which he contributed to the function.^ Little by 
little, therefore, the old pioneer life tended to retreat 
to the less desirable lands, leaving the slave-holder 
in possession of the rich "buck-shot" soils that 
spread over central Alabama and Mississippi and 

' Hodgson, Letters from North Am., I., 269; see Riley (editor), 
" Autobiography of Lincecum," in Miss. Hist. Soc, Publications, 
VIII., 443, for the wanderings of a southern pioneer in the 
recently opened Indian lands of Georgia and the southwest in 
these years. 

' Northern Ala. (published by Smith & De Land), 249; Brown, 
Hist, of Ala., 129-131; Brown, Lower South, 24-26. 

* Smedes, A Southern Planter, 67. 



92 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

the fat alluvium that lined the eastern bank of 
the Mississippi. Even to-day the counties of dense 
negro population reveal the results of this move- 
ment of segregation. 

By the side of the picture of the advance of the 
pioneer farmer, bearing his household goods in his 
canvas-covered wagon to his new home across the 
Ohio, must therefore be placed the picture of the 
southern planter crossing through the forests of 
western Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, or pass- 
ing over the free state of Illinois to the Missouri 
Valley, in his family carriage, with servants, packs of 
hunting-dogs, and a train of slaves, their nightly 
camp-fires lighting up the wilderness where so re- 
cently the Indian hunter had held possession.^ 

But this new society had a characteristic western 
flavor. The old patriarchal type of slavery along 
the seaboard was modified by the western conditions 
in the midst of which the slave-holding interest was 
now lodged. Planters, as well as pioneer farmers, 
were exploiting the wilderness and building a new so- 
ciety under characteristic western influences. Rude 
strength, a certain coarseness of life, and aggressive- 
ness characterized this society, as it did the whole of 
the Mississippi Valley.^ Slavery furnished a new in- 

* Hodgson, Letters from North Am., I., 138; Nile s' Register, 
XLIV., 222; Smedes, A Southern Planter, 52-54; Flint, Geog- 
raphy and History of the Western States, II., 350, 379; Bemhard, 
Duke of Saxe-Weimar, Travels, II., chaps, xvi., xvii. 

^ Baldwin. Flush Times in Ala.; cf. Gilmer, Sketches of Geor- 
gia, etc. 



1830] WESTERN DEVELOPMENT 93 

gredient for western forces to act upon. The system 
took on a more commercial tinge: the plantation 
had to be cleared and made profitable as a purely 
business enterprise. 

The slaves were purchased in considerable num- 
bers from the older states instead of being inherited 
in the family. Slave-dealers passed to the south- 
west, with their coffles of negroes brought from the 
outworn lands of the old south. It was estimated 
in 1832 that Virginia annually exported six thou- 
sand slaves for sale to other states.^ An English 
traveller reported in 1823 that every year from ten 
to fifteen thousand slaves were sold from the states 
of Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia, and sent to 
the south. ^ At the same time, illicit importation 
of slaves through New Orleans reached an amount 
estimated at from ten to fifteen thousand a year.^ 
It was not until the next decade that this incoming 
tide of slaves reached its height, but by 1830 it was 
clearly marked and was already transforming the 
southwest. Mississippi doubled the number of her 
slaves in the decade, and Alabama nearly trebled 
hers. In the same period the number of slaves of 
Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina increased 
but slightly. 

As the discussion of the south has already made 
clear, the explanation of this transformation of the 

' Collins, Domestic Slave Trade, 50. 

* Blane, Excursion through U. 5., 226; Hodgson, Letters from 
North Am., I., 194. * Collins, Domestic Slave Trade, 44. 



94 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

southwest into a region of slave -holding planters lies 
in the spread of cotton into the Gulf plains. In 181 1 
this region raised but five million pounds of cotton ; 
ten years later its product was sixty million pounds ; 
and in 1826 its fields were white with a crop of 
over one hundred and fifty million pounds. It soon 
outstripped the seaboard south, Alabama, which 
had practically no cotton crop in 181 1, and only 
ten million pounds in 182 1, had in 1834 eighty -five 
million pounds,^ a larger crop than either South 
Carolina or Georgia. 

Soon after 1830 the differences between the 
northern and southern portions of the Mississippi 
Valley were still further accentuated, (i) From New 
York and New England came a tide of settlement, 
in the thirties, which followed the Erie Canal and 
the Great Lakes, and began to occupy the prairie 
lands which had been avoided by the southern axe- 
men. This region then became an extension of the 
greater New England already to be seen in New 
York. (2) The southern pioneers in the northwest 
formed a transitional zone between this northern area 
and the slave states south of the Ohio. (3) In the 
Gulf plains a greater south was in process of forma- 
tion, but by no means completely established. As 
yet it was a mixture of pioneer and planter, slave 
and free, profoundly affected by its western traits.' 

* See table of cotton crop, ante, p. 47- 

* Curry, "A Settlement in East Ala.," in Am. Hist. Magazine, 
II., 203. 



1830] WESTERN DEVELOPMENT 95 

The different states of the south were steadily send- 
ing in bands of colonists. In Alabama, for example, 
the Georgians settled, as a rule, in the east; the 
Tennesseeans, moving from the great bend of the 
Tennessee River, were attracted to the northern and 
middle section; and the Virginians and Carolinians 
went to the west and southwest, following the bot- 
tom-lands near the rivers.^ 

' Brown, Hist, of Ala,, 129, 130; Northern Ala. (published bv 
Smith & De Land), pt. iv., 243 et seq. 

VOL. XIV. 8 



CHAPTER VII 

WESTERN COMMERCE AND IDEALS 
(1820-1830) 

BY 1820 the west had developed the beginnings 
of many of the cities which have since ruled 
over the region. Buffalo and Detroit were hardly 
more than villages until the close of this period. 
They waited for the rise of steam navigation on 
the Great Lakes and for the opening of the prairies. 
Cleveland, also, was but a hamlet during most of the 
decade; but by 1830 the construction of the canal 
connecting the Cuyahoga with the Scioto increased 
its prosperity, and its harbor began to profit by its 
natural advantages.* Chicago and Milwaukee were 
mere fur -trading stations in the Indian country. 
Pittsburg, at the head of the Ohio, was losing its old 
pre-eminence as the gateway to the west, but was 
finding recompense in the development of its manu- 
factures. By 1830 its population was about twelve 
thousand.^ Foundries, rolling-mills, nail -factories, 
steam-engine shops, and distilleries were busily at 

* Whittlesey, Early Hist, of Cleveland, 456; Kennedy, Hist, 
of Cleveland, chap. viii. 

' Thurston, Pittsburg and Allegheny in tJie Centennial Year, 61. 



1830I WESTERN TRADE AND IDEALS 97 

work, and the city, dingy with the smoke of soft 
coal, was already dubbed the "young Manchester" 
or the " Birmingham " of America. By 1830 Wheel- 
ing had intercepted much of the overland trade and 
travel to the Ohio, profiting by the old National 
Road and the wagon trade from Baltimore.^ 

Cincinnati was rapidly rising to the position of 
the " Queen City of the West." Situated where the 
river reached with a great bend towards the interior 
of the northwest, in the rich farming country be- 
tween the two Miamis, and opposite the Licking 
River, it was the commercial centre of a vast and 
fertile region of Ohio and Kentucky;^ and by 1830, 
with a population of nearly twenty-five thousand 
souls, it was the largest city of the west, with the 
exception of New Orleans. The centre of steamboat- 
building, it also received extensive imports of goods 
from the east and exported the surplus crops of 
Ohio and adjacent parts of Kentucky. Its principal 
industry, however, was pork-packing, from which it 
won the name of "Porkopolis" ' Louisville, at the 
falls of the Ohio, was an important place of trans- 
shipment, and the export centre for large quanti- 
ties of tobacco. There were considerable manufact- 
ures of rope and bagging, products of the Kentucky 
hemp-fields; and new cotton and woollen factories 



' Martin, Gazetteer of Va., 407. 
' Melish, Information to Emigrants, 108. 

' Drake and Mansfield, Cincinnati in 1826, p. 70; Winter in 
the West, I., 115. 

VOL. XIV ■» 



98 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

were struggling for existence.^ St. Louis occupied a 
unique position, as the entrepot of the important 
fur-trade of the upper Mississippi and the vast water 
system of the Missouri, as well as the outfitting-point 
for the Missouri settlements. It was the capital of 
the far west, and the commercial centre for Illinois. 
Its population at the close of the decade was about 
six thousand. 

Only a few villages lay along the Mississippi below 
St. Louis until the traveller reached New Orleans, 
the emporium of the whole Mississippi Valley. As 
yet the direct effect of the Erie Canal was chiefly 
limited to the state of New York. The great bulk of 
western exports passed down the tributaries of the 
Mississippi to this city, which was, therefore, the 
centre of foreign exports for the valley, as well as 
the port from which the coastwise trade in the prod- 
ucts of the whole interior departed. In 1830 its 
population was nearly fifty thousand. 

The rise of an agricultural surplus was transform- 
ing the west and preparing a new influence in the 
nation. It was this surplus and the demand for 
markets that developed the cities just mentioned. 
As they grew, the price of land in their neighborhood 
increased ; roads radiated into the surrounding coun- 
try; and farmers, whose crops had been almost 
worthless from the lack of transportation facilities, 
now found it possible to market their surplus at a 

* Durrett, Centenary of Louisville (Filson Club, Publications, 
No. 8), 50-101; Louisville Directory, i8j2, p. 131. 



1830] WESTERN TRADE AND IDEALS 99 

small profit. While the west was thus learning the 
advantages of a home market, the extension of cot- 
ton and sugar cultivation in the south and south- 
west gave it a new and valuable market. More 
and more, the planters came to rely upon the north- 
west for their food supplies and for the mules and 
horses for their fields. Cotton became the engross- 
ing interest of the plantation belt, and, while the 
full effects of this differentiation of industry did not 
appear in the decade of this volume, the beginnings 
were already visible.^ In 1835, Pitkin^ reckoned 
the value of the domestic and foreign exports of the 
interior as far in excess of the whole exports of the 
United States in 1790. Within forty years the de- 
velopment of the interior had brought about the 
economic independence of the United States. 

During most of the decade the merchandise to 
supply the interior was brought laboriously across 
the mountains by the Pennsylvania turnpikes and 
the old National Road; or, in the case of especially 
heavy freight, was carried along the Atlantic coast 
into the gulf and up the Mississippi and Ohio by 
steamboats. The cost of transportation in the 
wagon trade from Philadelphia to Pittsburg and 
Baltimore to Wheeling placed a heavy tax upon the 
consumer.' In 18 17 the freight charge from Phila- 
delphia to Pittsburg was sometimes as high as seven 

* Callender, " Early Transportation and Banking Enterprises 
of the States," in Quarterly Journal of Econ., XVII., 3-54. 

* Pitkin, Statistical View (1835), 534. 
^Niles' Register, XX., 180. 



loo RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

to ten dollars a hundredweight; a few years later 
it became from four to six dollars; and in 1823 it 
had fallen to three dollars. It took a month to 
wagon merchandise from Baltimore to central Ohio. 
Transportation companies, running four-horse freight 
wagons, conducted a regular business on these turn- 
pikes between the eastern and western states. In 
1820 over three thousand wagons ran between Phila- 
delphia and Pittsburg, transporting merchandise 
valued at about eighteen million dollars annu- 
ally.» 

The construction of the National Road reduced 
freight rates to nearly one-half what they were at 
the close of the War of 181 2 ; and the introduction of 
steam navigation from New Orleans up the Missis- 
sippi cut water-rates by that route to one-third of 
the former charge.' Nevertheless, there was a crying 
need for internal improvements, and particularly for 
canals, to provide an outlet for the increasing prod- 
ucts of the west. "Even in the country where I 
reside, not eighty miles from tidewater," said 
Tucker,' of Virginia, in 181 8, "it takes the farmer 
one bushel of wheat to pay the expense of carrying 
two to a seaport town." 

* Birkbeck, Journey from Va., 128; Ogden, Letters from the 
West, 8; Cobbett, Year's Residence, 337; Evans, Pedestrious 
Tour, 145; Philadelphia in 1824, 45; Searight, Old Pike, 107, 
112; Mills, Treatise on Inland Navigation (1820), 89, 90, 93, 
95-97; Journal of Polit. Econ., VIII., 36. 

* Annals of Cong., 18 Cong., i Sess., I., 991 ; cf Fearon, Sketches, 
260; Niles' Register, XXV., 95; Cincinnati Christian Journal, July 
27, 1830. ' Annals of Cong., 15 Cong., i Sess., I., 1126. 



1830] WESTERN TRADE AND IDEALS loi 

The bulk of the crop, as compared with its value, 
practically prevented transportation by land farther 
than a hundred miles.* It is this that helps to ex- 
plain the attention which the interior first gave to 
making whiskey and raising live-stock; the former 
carried the crop in a small bulk with high value, 
while the live-stock could walk to a market. Until 
after the War of 181 2, the cattle of the Ohio Valley 
were driven to the seaboard, chiefly to Philadelphia 
or Baltimore. Travellers were astonished to see on 
the highway droves of four or five thousand hogs, 
going to an eastern market. It was estimated that 
over a hundred thousand hogs were driven east an- 
nually from Kentucky alone. Kentucky hog-drivers 
also passed into Tennessee, Virginia, and the Caro- 
linas with their droves.^ The swine lived on the nuts 
and acorns of the forest ; thus they were peculiarly 
suited to pioneer conditions. At first the cattle 
were taken to the plantations of the Potomac to 
fatten for Baltimore and Philadelphia, much in the 
same way that, in recent times, the cattle of the 
Great Plains are brought to the feeding-grounds in 
the com belt of Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa.' Tow- 
ards the close of the decade, however, the feeding- 
grounds shifted into Ohio, and the pork-packing 
industry, as we have seen, found its centre at Cin- 

* McMaster, United States, III., 464. 

* Life of Ephraim Cutler, 89; Birkbeck, Journey, 24; Blane, 
Excursion through U. S. (London, 1824), 90; Atlantic Monthly, 
XXVI., 170. 

' Michaux, Travels, 191: Palmer, Journal of Travels, ;^6 



I02 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

cinnati/ the most important source of supply for 
the hams and bacon and salt pork which passed 
down the Mississippi to furnish a large share of the 
plantation food. From Kentucky and the rest of 
the Ohio Valley droves of mules and horses passed 
through the Tennessee Valley to the south to supply 
the plantations. Statistics at Cumberland Gap for 
1828 gave the value of Hve -stock passing the turn- 
pike gate there at $1,167,000.' Senator Hayne, of 
South CaroHna, declared that in 1824 the south was 
supplied from the w^est, through Saluda Gap, with 
live-stock, horses, cattle, and hogs to the amount of 
over a million dollars a year.^ 

But the outlet from the west over the roads to 
the east and south was but a subordinate element 
in the internal commerce. Down the Mississippi 
floated a multitude of heavily freighted craft: lum- 
ber rafts from the Allegheny, the old-time arks, with 
cattle, flour, and bacon, hay-boats, keel-boats, and 
skiffs, all mingled with the steamboats which plied 
the western waters.^ Flatboatmen, raftsmen, and 
deck-hands constituted a turbulent and reckless 
population, living on the country through which 
they passed, fighting and drinking in true "half- 

* Hall, Statistics of the West (1836), 145-147. 

^ Emigrants' and Travellers' Guide to the West (1834), 194. 

* Speech in Senate in 1832, Register of Debates in Cong., VIII., 
pt. i., 80; of. Annals of Cong., 18 Cong., i Sess., I., 141 1. 

* Flint, Recollections of the Last Ten Years, loi-iio; E. S. 
Thomas, Reminiscences, I., 290-293; Hall, Statistics of the West 
(1836), 236; Howells, Life in Ohio, 85; Schultz, Travels, 129; 
Hulbert, Historic Highways, IX., chaps, iii., iv., v. 



1830] WESTERN TRADE AND IDEALS 103 

horse, half -alligator " style. Prior to the steamboat, 
all of the commerce from New Orleans to the upper 
country was carried on in about twenty barges, 
averaging a hundred tons each, and making one trip 
a year. Although the steamboat did not drive out 
the other craft, it revolutionized the commerce of 
the river. Whereas it had taken the keel-boats 
thirty to forty days to descend from Louisville to 
New Orleans, and about ninety days to ascend the 
fifteen hundred miles of navigation by poling and 
warping up-stream, the steamboat had shortened 
the time, by 1822, to seven days down and sixteen 
days up.^ As the steamboats ascended the various 
tributaries of the Mississippi to gather the products 
of the growing west, the pioneers came more and 
more to realize the importance of the invention. 
They resented the idea of the monopoly which Ful- 
ton and Livingston wished to enforce prior to the 
decision of Chief -Justice Marshall, in the case of 
Gibbons vs. Ogden — a decision of vital interest to 
the whole interior.^ 

They saw in the steamboat a symbol of their own 
development. A writer in the Western Monthly Re- 
view,^ unconsciously expressed the very spirit of the 

^Annals of Conp;., 17 Con,^., 2 Sess., 407; McMaster, United 
States, v., 166; National Gazette, September 26, 1823 (list of 
steamboats, rates of passage, estimate of products) ; Blane, 
Excursion through the U. S., 119; Niles' Register, XXV., 95. 

^ Thomas, Travels through the Western Country, 62; Alexandria 
Herald, June 23, 181 7. 

^Timothy Flint's Western Monthly Review (May, 1827), I., 
25; William Bullock, Sketch of a "Journey, 132. 



I04 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

self -contented, hustling, materialistic west in these 
words : " An Atlantic cit , who talks of us under the name 
of backwoodsmen, would not believe, that such fairy 
structures of oriental gorgeousness and splendor, as 
the Washington, the Florida, the Walk in the Water, 
the Lady of the Lake, etc. etc., had ever existed in 
the imaginative brain of a romancer, much less, that 
they were actually in existence, rushing down the 
Mississippi, as on the wings of the wind, or plowing 
up between the forests, and walking against the 
mighty current 'as things of life,' bearing specula- 
tors, merchants, dandies, fine ladies, every thing 
real, and every thing affected, in the form of human- 
ity, with pianos, and stocks of novels, and cards, and 
dice, and flirting, and love-making, and drinking, 
and champaigne, and on the deck, perhaps, three 
hundred fellows, who have seen alligators, and 
neither fear whiskey, nor gun-powder. A steamboat, 
coming from New Orleans, brings to the remotest 
villages of our streams, and the very doors of the 
cabins, a little Paris, a section of Broadway, or a 
slice of Philadelphia, to ferment in the minds of our 
young people, the innate propensity for fashions and 
finery. Within a day's journey of us, three distinct 
canals are in respectable progress towards comple- 
tion. . . . Cincinnati will soon be the centre of the 
'celestial empire,' as the Chinese say; and instead 
of encountering the storms, the sea sickness, and 
dangers of a passage from the gulf of Mexico to the 
Atlantic, whenever the Erie canal shall be com- 



1830] WESTERN TRADE AND IDEALS 105 

pleted, the opulent southern planters will take their 
families, their dogs and parrots, through a world of 
forests, from New Orleans to New York, giving us 
a call by the way. When they are more acquainted 
with us, their voyage will often terminate here." 

By 1830 the produce which reached New Orleans 
from the Mississippi Valley amounted to about 
twenty-six million dollars.^ In 1822 three million 
dollars' worth of goods was estimated to have passed 
the Falls of the Ohio on the way to market, repre- 
senting much of the surplus of the Ohio Valley. Of 
this, pork amounted to $1,000,000 in value; flour 
to $900,000; tobacco to $600,000; and whiskey to 
$500,000.^ The inventory of products reveals the 
Mississippi Valley as a vast colonial society, pro- 
ducing the raw materials of a simple and primitive 
agriculture. The beginnings of manufacture in the 
cities, however, promised to bring about a move- 
ment for industrial independence in the west. In 
spite of evidences of growing wealth, there was such 
a decline in agricultural prices that, for the farmer 
who did not live on the highways of commerce, it 
was almost unprofitable to raise wheat for the mar- 
ket. 

An Ohio pioneer of this time relates that at the 
beginning of the decade fifty cents a bushel was a 



' Quarterly Journal of Economics, XVII., 20; Pitkin, Statistical 
Vieiv (ed. of 1835), 534-536. 

^National Republican, March 7, 1823; cf. National Gazette, 
September 26, 1823; B\a.ne, Excursion through the U.S., 119. 



io6 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

great price for wheat at the river; and as two 
horses and a man were required for four days to 
make the journey of thirty-five miles to the Ohio, 
in good weather, with thirty-five or forty bushels 
of wheat, and a great deal longer if the roads were 
bad, it was not to be expected that the farmer could 
realize more than twenty-five cents in cash for it. 
But there was no sale for it in cash. The nominal 
price for it in trade was usually thirty cents. ^ When 
wheat brought twenty-five cents a bushel in Illinois 
in 1825, it sold at over eighty cents in Petersburg, 
Virginia, and flour was six dollars a barrel at 
Charleston, South Carolina.^ 

These are the economic conditions that assist in un- 
derstanding the political attitude of western leaders 
like Henry Clay and Andrew Jackson. The cry of 
the east for protection to infant industries was swelled 
by the little cities of the west, and the demand for 
a home market found its strongest support beyond 
the Alleghanies. Internal improvements and lower 
rates of transportation were essential to the pros- 
perity of the westerners. Largely a debtor class, 
in need of capital, credit, and an expansion of the 
currency, they resented attempts to restrain the 
reckless state banking which their optimism fostered. 

But the political ideals and actions of the west 



* Howells, Life in Ohio, 138; see M'Culloch, Commercial 
Dictionary, I., 683, 684; Hazard, U.S. Commercial and Statistical 
Register, I., 251; O'Reilly, Sketches of Rochester, 362. 

» Niles' Register, XXIX, 165. 



1830] WESTERN TRADE AND IDEALS 107 

are explained by social quite as much as by econom- 
ic forces. It was certain that this society, where 
equality and individualism flourished, where asser- 
tive democracy was supreme, where impatience with 
the old order of things was a ruling passion, would 
demand control of the government, would resent 
the rule of the trained statesmen and official classes, 
and would fight nominations by congressional cau- 
cus and the continuance of presidential dynasties. 
Besides its susceptibility to change, the west had 
generated, from its Indian fighting, forest-felling, 
and expansion, a belligerency and a largeness of out- 
look with regard to the nation's territorial destiny. 
As the pioneer, widening the ring-wall of his clearing 
in the midst of the stumps and marshes of the wil- 
derness, had a vision of the lofty buildings and 
crowded streets of a future city, so the west as a 
whole developed ideals of the future of the common 
man, and of the grandeur and expansion of the 
nation. 

The west was too new a section to have devel- 
oped educational facilities to any large extent. 
The pioneers' poverty, as well as the traditions of 
the southern interior from which they so largely 
came, discouraged extensive expenditures for public 
schools.^ In Kentucky and Tennessee the more 
prosperous planters had private tutors, often New 
England collegians, for their children. For example, 
Amos Kendall, later postmaster-general, was tutor 

' McMaster, United States, V., 370-372. 



io8 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

in Henry Clay's family. So-called colleges were 
numerous, some of them fairly good. In 1830 a 
writer made a survey of higher education in the 
whole western country and reported twenty-eight 
institutions, with seven hundred and sixty-six grad- 
uates and fourteen hundred and thirty undergrad- 
uates. Less than forty thousand volumes were 
recorded in the college and "social" libraries of the 
entire Mississippi Valley.^ Very few students went 
from the west to eastern colleges; but the founda- 
tions of public education had been laid in the land 
grants for common schools and universities. For 
the present this fund was generally misappropriated 
and wasted, or worse. Nevertheless, the ideal of a 
democratic education was held up in the first consti- 
tution of Indiana, making it the duty of the legis- 
lature to provide for " a general system of education, 
ascending in a regular graduation from township 
schools to a State university, wherein tuition shall 
be gratis, and equally open to all." ^ 

Literature did not flourish in the west, although 
the newspaper press ' followed closely after the re- 
treating savage; many short-lived periodicals were 
founded,"* and writers like Timothy Flint and James 

^ Am. Quarterly Register (November, 1830), III., 127-131. 

' Poore, Charters and Constitutions, pt. i., 508 (art. ix., sec. 2 
of Constitution of Ind., 1816). 

' W. H. Perrin, Pioneer Press of Ky. (Filson Club Publications). 

* Venable, Beginnings of Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley, 
chap, iii.; W. B. Caims, Development of American Literature 
from 181 ^ to 18 J J, in University of Wis., Bulletin (Phil, and Lit. 
Series), I., 60-63. 



1830] WESTERN TRADE AND IDEALS 109 

Hall were not devoid of literary ability. Lexington, 
in Kentucky, and Cincinnati made rival claims to be 
the "Athens of the West." In religion, the west 
was partial to those denominations which prevailed 
in the democratic portions of the older sections. 
Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians took the 
lead.^ 

The religious life of the west frequently expressed 
itself in the form of emotional gatherings, in the 
camp-meetings and the revivals, where the rude, un- 
lettered, but deeply religious backwoods preachers 
moved their large audiences with warnings of the 
wrath of God. Muscular Christianity was personi- 
fied in the circuit-rider, who, with his saddle-bags 
and Bible, threaded the dreary trails through the 
forest from settlement to settlement. From the 
responsiveness of the west to religious excitement, 
it was easy to perceive that here was a region capable 
of being swayed in large masses by enthusiasm. 
These traits of the camp-meeting were manifested 
later in political campaigns. 

Thus this society beyond the mountains, recruited 
from all the older states and bound together by the 
Mississippi, constituted a region swayed for the most 
part by common impulses. By the march of the 
westerners away from their native states to the 



^ Am. Quarterly Register, III., 135 (November, 1830); Scher- 
merhom and Mills, View of U. S. West of the Alleghany Moun- 
tains (Hartford, 1814); Home Missionary, 1829, pp. 78, 79; 1830, 
p. 172; McMaster, United States, IV., 550-555. 



no RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

public domain of the nation, and by their organiza- 
tion as territories of the United States, they lost that 
state particularism which distinguished many of the 
old commonwealths of the coast. The section was 
nationalistic and democratic to the core. The west 
admired the self-made man and was ready to follow 
its hero with the enthusiasm of a section more re- 
sponsive to personality than to the programmes of 
trained statesmen. It was a self-confident section, 
believing in its right to share in government, and 
troubled by no doubts of its capacity to rule. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE FAR WEST 
(1820-1830) 

IN the decade of which we write, more than two- 
thirds of the present area of the United States 
was Indian country — a vast wilderness stretching 
from the Great Lakes to the Pacific Ocean. East 
of the Mississippi, the pioneers had taken possession 
of the hardwoods of the Ohio, but over the prairies 
between them and the Great Lakes the wild flowers 
and grasses grew rank and undisturbed. To the 
north, across Michigan and Wisconsin, spread the 
sombre, white-pine wilderness, interlaced with hard- 
woods, which swept in ample zone along the Great 
Lakes, and, in turn, faded into the treeless expanse 
of the prairies beyond the Mississippi. To the 
south, in the Gulf plains, Florida was, for the most 
part, a wilderness; and, as we have seen, great areas 
of Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia were still un- 
occupied by civilization. 

West of the Mississippi lay a huge new world — an 
ocean of grassy prairie that rolled far to the west, 
till it reached the zone where insufficient rainfall 
transformed it into the arid plains, which stretched 

VOL. XIV. — 



112 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

away to the foot-hills of the Rocky Mountains. 
Over this vast waste, equal in area to France, Ger- 
many, Spain, Portugal, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Den- 
mark, and Belgium combined, a land where now 
wheat and corn fields and grazing herds produce 
much of the food supply for the larger part of 
America and for great areas of Europe, roamed the 
bison and the Indian hunter. Beyond this, the 
Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevadas, enclos- 
ing high plateaus, heaved up their vast bulk through 
nearly a thousand miles from east to west, concealing 
untouched treasures of silver and gold. The great 
valleys of the Pacific coast in Oregon and California 
held but a sparse population of Indian traders, a 
few Spanish missions, and scattered herdsmen. 

At the beginning of Monroe's presidency, the 
Pacific coast was still in dispute between England, 
Spain, Russia, and the United States. Holding to 
all of Texas, Spain also raised her flag over her 
colonists who spread from Mexico along the valley 
of the Rio Grande to Santa Fe, and she claimed the 
great unoccupied wilderness of mountain and desert 
comprising the larger portion of Colorado, Arizona, 
Utah, and Nevada, as well as California. In the 
decade of 1 820-1 830, fur-traders threaded the dark 
and forbidding defiles of the mountains, unfolded 
the secrets of the Great Basin, and found their way 
across the Rockies to California and Oregon; the 
government undertook diplomatic negotiations to 
safeguard American rights on the Pacific, and ex- 



1830] THE FAR WEST 113 

tended a line of forts well into the Indian coun- 
try ; while far-seeing statesmen on the floor of Con- 
gress challenged the nation to fulfil its destiny by 
planting its settlements boldly beyond the Rocky 
Mountains on the shores of the Pacific. It was a 
call to the lodgment of American power on that 
ocean, the mastery of which is to determine the 
future relations of Asiatic and European civiliza- 
tions.^ 

A survey of the characteristics of the life of the 
far west shows that, over Wisconsin and the larger 
part of Michigan, the Indian trade was still carried 
on by methods introduced by the French.^ Astor's 
American Fur Company practically controlled the 
trade of Wisconsin and Michigan. It shipped its 
guns and ammunition, blankets, gewgaws, and 
whiskey from Mackinac to some one of the principal 
posts, where they were placed in the light birch 
canoes, manned by French boatmen, and sent 
throughout the forests to the minor trading-posts. 
Practically all of the Indian villages of the tribu- 
taries of the Great Lakes and of the upper Missis- 
sippi were regularly visited by the trader. The 
trading-posts became the nuclei of later settlements ; 
the traders' trails grew into the early roads, and 
their portages marked out the location for canals. 

• Cf . Babcock, Am. Nationality (Am. Nation, XIII.), chap. 

XV. 

' Masson, La Bourgeois de Nordwest; Parkman. Old R€' 
gimg. 



114 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

Little by little the fur-trade was undermining the 
Indian society and paving the way for the entrance 
of civilization.^ 

In the War of 181 2, all along the frontier of 
Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri, as well as in the 
southwest, the settlers had drawn back into forts, 
much as in the early days of the occupation of Ken- 
tucky and Tennessee, and the traders and the Ind- 
ians had been entirely under the influence of Great 
Britain. In the negotiations at Ghent, that power, 
having captured the American forts at Mackinac, 
Prairie du Chien, and Chicago, tried to incorporate 
in the treaty a provision for a neutral belt, or buffer 
state, of Indian territory in the northwest, to 
separate Canada from the United States.'' Taught 
by this experience, the United States, at the close of 
the war, passed laws excluding aliens from conduct- 
ing the Indian trade, and erected forts at Green 
Bay, Prairie du Chien, Chicago, and Fort Snelling. 
By order of Secretary of War Calhoun, Governor 
Cass, of Michigan, made an expedition in 1820 
along the south shore of Lake Superior into Minne- 
sota, to compel the removal of English flags and to 
replace British by American influence.^ At the 
same time, an expedition under Major Long visited 

* Turner, Character and Influence of the Fur Trade in Wis., in 
Wis. Hist. Soc, Transactions , 1889. 

' Cf. Babcock, Am. Nationality {Am. Nation, XIII.). chap. x. 

^Schoolcraft, Hist, of Indian Tribes, VI., 422; ibid., Narra- 
tive Journal; " Doty's Journal," in Wis. Hist. Soc, Collections, 
XIII., 163. 



1830] THE FAR WEST 115 

the upper waters of the Minnesota River on a similar 
errand.* An agent who was sent by the govern- 
ment to investigate the Indian conditions of this 
region in 1820, recommended that the country now 
included in Wisconsin, northern Michigan, and part 
of Minnesota should be an Indian reservation, 
from which white settlements should be excluded, 
with the idea that ultimately the Indian pop- 
ulation should be organized as a state of the 
Union.'' 

The Creeks and Cherokees, Choctaws, and Chicka- 
saws of the Gulf region were more advanced tow- 
ards civilization than the Indians of the northwest. 
While the latter lived chiefly by hunting and trap- 
ping, the southwestern Indians had developed a 
considerable agriculture and a sedentary life. For 
that very reason, however, they were the more 
obnoxious to the pioneers who pressed upon their 
territory from all sides ; and, as we shall see, strenu- 
ous efforts were made to remove them beyond the 
Mississippi. 

Throughout the decade the problem of the future 
of the Indians east of this river was a pressing one, 
and the secretaries of war, to whose department the 
management of the tribes belonged, made many 
plans and recommendations for their civilization, 
improvement, and assimilation. But the advance 
of the frontier broke down the efforts to preserve 

* Keating, Long's Expedition. 

* Morse, Report on Indian Affairs in 1820. 



ii6 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

and incorporate these primitive people in the dom- 
inant American society/ 

Across the Mississippi, settlement of the whites 
had, in the course of this decade, pushed up the 
Missouri well towards the western boundary of the 
state, and, as the map of the settlement shows, had 
made advances towards the interior in parts of 
Arkansas as well. But these were only narrow 
wedges of civilization thrust into the Indian coun- 
try, the field of operations of the fur-traders. Suc- 
cessors to the French traders who had followed the 
rivers and lakes of Canada far towards the interior, 
the Hudson's Bay Company, and the Northwest 
Company under British charters had carried their 
operations from the Great Lakes to the Pacific long 
before Americans entered the west. As early as 1793, 
Alexander Mackenzie reached the Pacific from the 
Great Lakes by way of Canada.^ The year before, 
an English ship under Vancouver explored the north- 
western coast in the hope of finding a passage by 
sea to the north and east. He missed the mouth 
of the Colimibia, which in the following month was 
entered by an American, Captain Gray, who ascend- 
ed the river twenty miles. The expedition of Lewis 
and Clark, 1 804-1 806, made the first crossing of 
the continent from territory of the United States, 

^ Am. State Paps., Indian, TI., 275, 542, et passim; J. Q. Adams, 
Memoirs, VII., 89, 90, 92 ; Richardson, Messages and Papers, II., 
234, et seq. 

* Mackenzie, Travels. 



1830] THE FAR WEST 117 

and strengthened the claims of that country to the 
region of the Columbia.* 

John Jacob Astor's attempt to plant a trading- 
post at Astoria ' had been defeated by the treachery 
of his men, who, at the opening of the War of 18 12, 
turned the post over to the British Northwest fur- 
traders. The two great branches of the Columbia, 
the one reaching up into Canada, and the other 
pushing far into the Rocky Mountains, on the Amer- 
ican side, constituted lines of advance for the rival 
forces of England and the United States in the 
struggle for the Oregon country. The British 
traders rapidly made themselves masters of the 
region.' By 1825 the Hudson's Bay Company 
monopolized the English fur-trade and was estab- 
lished at Fort George (as Astoria was rechristened), 
Fort Walla-Walla, and Fort Vancouver, near the 
mouth of the Willamette. Here, for twenty-two 
years, its agent, Dr. John McLoughlin, one of the 
many Scotchmen who have built up England's 
dominion in the new countries of the globe, ruled 
like a benevolent monarch over the realms of the 
British traders."* From these Oregon posts as cen- 
tres they passed as far south as the region of Great 
Salt Lake, in what was then Mexican territory. 

While the British traders occupied the northwest 
coast the Spaniards held California. Although they 

* Cf. Channing, Jeffersonian System {Am. Nation, XII.), chap, 
vii. * Irving, Astoria. * Coues (editor) , Greater Northwest. 

* Schafer, Pacific Northwest, chap. viii. 



ii8 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1812 

established the settlement of San Francisco in the 
year of the declaration of American independence, 
settlement grew but slowly. The presidios, the mis- 
sions, with their Indian neophytes, and the cattle 
ranches feebly occupied this imperial domain, Yan- 
kee trading-ships gathered hides and tallow at San 
Diego, Monterey, and San Francisco ; Yankee whalers, 
seal-hunters, and fur-traders sought the northwest 
coast and passed on to China to bring back to Boston 
and Salem the products of the far east.^ But Spain's 
possession was not secure. The genius for expan- 
sion which had already brought the Russians to 
Alaska drew them down the coast even to California, 
and in 181 2 they established Fort Ross at Bodega 
Bay, a few miles below the mouth of Russian River, 
north of San Francisco. This settlement, as well as 
the lesser one in the Farallone Islands, endured for 
nearly a generation, a menace to Spain's ascendency 
in California in the chaotic period when her colonies 
were in revolt.^ 

In the mean time, from St. Louis as a centre, 
American fur- traders, the advance-guard of settle- 
ment, were penetrating into the heart of the vast 
wilderness between the Mississippi and the Pacific 
coast.' This was a more absolute Indian domain 
than was the region between the Alleghanies and 
the Mississippi at the end of the seventeenth cen- 

' R. H. Dana, Two Years before the Mast. 
* H. H. Bancroft, Hist, of California, II., 628; Hittel, Hist, of 
California. ^ Chittenden, Am. Fur Trade of the Far West. 



1823I THE FAR WEST 119 

tury — an empire of mountains and prairies, where 
the men of the Stone Age watched with alarm the 
first crawHng waves of that tide of civiHzation that 
was to sweep them away. The savage population 
of the far west has already been described in an 
earlier volume of this series. ^ 

With the development of the Rocky Mountain 
Fur Company, the most flourishing period of the St. 
Louis trade in the far west began. The founder of 
this company was William H. Ashley, a Virginian. 
Between the autumn of 1823 and the spring of the 
next year, one of his agents erected a post at the 
mouth of the Bighorn, and sent out his trappers 
through the Green River valley, possibly even to 
Great Salt Lake. A detachment of this party found 
the gateway of the Rocky Mountains, through the 
famous South Pass by way of the Sweetwater branch 
of the north fork of the Platte. This pass com- 
manded the routes to the great interior basin and 
to the Pacific Ocean. What Cumberland Gap was 
in the advance of settlement across the Allegha- 
nies, South Pass was in the movement across 
the Rocky Moimtains ; through it passed the 
later Oregon and California trails to the Pacific 
coast. 

On the lower Missouri and at various places in the 



* Farrand, Basis of Am. Hist. (Am. Nation, II.), chaps, viii., 
ix.,xii.; see also chap. iv. On the location of the Indians, see 
map, p. 309; Chittenden, Am. Fur Trade, II., pt. v., chaps, viii., 
ix., X.; Bureau of Ethnology, Seventh Annual Report. 



I20 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1823 

interior/ stockaded trading-posts were erected by 
the Rocky Mountain Fur Company and its rival, the 
American Fur Company. In these posts the old 
fur-trade life of the past went on, with French half- 
breed packmen and boatmen, commanded by the 
bourgeois. But in some of the best trading-grounds 
the savages declined to permit the erection of posts, 
and so, under Ashley's leadership, bands of mounted 
American trappers, chiefly Kentuckians, Tennessee - 
ans, and Missourians, were sent out to hunt and 
trade in the rich beaver valleys of the mountains. 
The Rocky Mountain trappers were the successors 
to the Alleghany frontiersmen, carrying on in this 
new region, where nature wrought on a vaster plan, 
the old trapping life which their ancestors had car- 
ried on through Cumberland Gap in the " dark and 
bloody ground" of Kentucky. 

Yearly, in June and July, a rendezvous was held 
in the mountains, to which the brigades of trappers 
returned with the products of their hunt, to receive 
the supplies for the coming year. Here, also, came 
Indian tribes to trade, and bands of free trappers, 
lone wanderers in the mountains, to sell their furs 
and secure supplies.^ The rendezvous was usually 
some verdure-clad valley or park set in the midst 
of snow-capped mountains, a paradise of game. 
Such places were Jackson's Hole, at the foot of the 
lofty Tetons, Pierre's Hole, not far away, and 

' See map, p. 114; Chittenden, Am. Fur Trade, I., 44-51 (de- 
scribes posts, etc.). ' Irving, Bonneville, chap. i. 



1827] THE FAR WEST 121 

Ogden's Hole, near the present site of Ogden, in 
Utah. Great Salt Lake was probably first visited 
by Bridger in 1824, and the next year a party of 
Hudson Bay trappers were expelled by Americans 
who took possession of their furs. In 1826, Ashley 
carried a six-pounder cannon on wheels to Utah 
Lake for the defence of his post. 

A new advance of the American fur-trader was 
made when Jedediah Smith succeeded Ashley as the 
leader in Rocky Mountain trade and exploration. 
In 1826 he left the Salt Lake rendezvous with a 
party of trappers to learn the secrets of the lands 
between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific 
Ocean. Proceeding to the southwest along the 
Virgin River, Smith descended it to the Colorado, 
and crossed the desert to San Diego, California. 
Here, by the intercession of a Yankee captain then 
in that port, he obtained supplies from the Span- 
iards, and turned to the northwest, travelling parallel 
to the coast for some three hundred miles to winter- 
ing grounds on the headwaters of the San Joaquin 
and the Merced. Leaving most of his party behind, 
he crossed the mountains, by a route south of the 
Humboldt, and returned to Great Salt Lake. 

Almost immediately he set out again for Cali- 
fornia by the previous route, and in 1827 reached 
the San Jose mission. Here he was arrested by the 
Spanish authorities and sent under guard to Monte- 
rey, where another Yankee skipper secured his re- 
lease. Wintering once more in California, this time 



122 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1826 

on the American Fork, he reached the coast in the 
spring of 1828, and followed the Umpquah River 
towards the Oregon country. While he was absent, 
his camp was attacked by the Indians and fifteen 
of his men killed. Absolutely alone. Smith worked 
his way through the forest to Fort Vancouver, 
where he enjoyed the hospitality of Dr. McLoughlin 
through the winter. In the following spring he 
ascended the Columbia to the Hudson Bay posts 
among the Flatheads, and made his way in the 
summer of 1829 to the rendezvous of his company 
at the Tetons. In three years this daring trader, 
braving the horrors of the desert and passing un- 
scathed from Indian attacks which carried off most 
of his companions, opened to knowledge much of 
the vast country between Great Salt Lake and 
the Pacific.^ In 1831, while on the Santa Fe trail, 
Smith and his companions lost their way. Perish- 
ing with thirst, he finally reached the Cimaron, 
where, as he was digging for water in its sandy bed, 
he was shot by an Indian. 

Thus the active men of the Rocky Mountain Fur 
Company, in the decade between 1820 and 1830, 
revealed the sources of the Platte, the Green, the 
Yellowstone, and the Snake rivers, and the char- 
acteristics of the Great Salt Lake region; they 
pioneered the way to South Pass, descended Green 
River by boat, carried cannon into the interior 
basin; showed the practicability of a wagon route 

> H. H. Bancroft, California, III., 152-160, citing the source?. 



1832] THE FAR WEST 123 

through the Rockies, reached CaHfomia from Salt 
Lake, crossed the Sierras and the deserts of Utah and 
Nevada, and became intimately acquainted with the 
activity of the British traders of the northwest coast. ^ 
Already an interest in Oregon and the Rocky 
Mountain region was arising on the eastern sea- 
board. In 1832, Captain Bonneville, an officer in 
the United States army, on leave of absence, 
passed with a wagon-train into the Rocky Moim- 
tains, where for nearly three years he trapped and 
traded and explored.^ Walker, one of his men, in 
1833, reached California by the Humboldt River (a 
route afterwards followed by the emigrants to Cali- 
fornia), and made known much new country. A 
New England enthusiast, Hall Kelley, had for some 
years been lecturing on the riches of the Oregon 
country and the need of planting an agricultural 
colony there. It was natural that Boston should 
be interested in the Oregon country, which was 
visited by so many vessels from that port. In 
1820, New England missionaries settled in the 
Hawaiian Islands, closely connected by trade with 
the coast. In 1832, Nathaniel Wyeth, of Cam- 
bridge, Massachusetts, led a party of New - Eng- 
landers west, with the plan of establishing a trading 
and fishing post on the waters of the Columbia.' 

' Chittenden, Am. Fur Trade, I., 306. 

* Irving, Bonneville. 

'Chittenden, Am. Fur Trade, I., 435; Wyeth's "Journals" 
are published by the Oregon Hist. Soc; cf. Irving, Bonneville, 
chap. vi. 



124 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

With Wyeth, on a second expedition in 1834, went 
the Reverend Jason Lee and four Methodist mission- 
aries. Two years later came Dr. Marcus Whitman 
and another company of missionaries with their 
wives; they brought a wagon through South Pass 
and over the mountains to the Snake River, and 
began an agricultural colony. Thus the old story 
of the sequence of fur-trader, missionary, and set- 
tler was repeated. The possession of Oregon by 
the British fur-trader was challenged by the Ameri- 
can farmer. 

Contemporaneously with the development of the 
fur-trade in the Rocky Mountains, a trade was 
opened between St. Louis and the old Spanish set- 
tlements at Santa Fe. Although even in the days 
of Washington adventurous frontiersmen like George 
Rogers Clark had set their eyes on Santa Fe and 
the silver-mines of the southwest, it was not until 
the Mexican revolution (1821), when Spain's con- 
trol was weakened throughout her whole domain, 
that systematic trade was possible. In 1822, Beck- 
nell, of Missouri, took a wagon-train to Santa Fe, 
to trade for horses and mules and to trap en route. 
Year after year thereafter, caravans of Missouri 
traders found their way across the desert, by the 
Santa Fe trail, with cottons and other dry-goods 
furnished from St. Louis, and brought back horses, 
mules, furs, and silver. The trade averaged about 
one hundred and thirty thousand dollars a year, and 
was an important source of supply of specie for the 



1833] THE FAR WEST 125 

west ; and it stimulated the interest of St. Louis in 
the Mexican provinces. The mode of handling the 
wagon - trains that passed between Missouri and 
Santa Fe furnished the model for the caravans that 
later were to cross the plains in the rush to the gold- 
fields of California,* 

By 1833 the important western routes were 
clearly made known. ^ The Oregon trail, the Santa 
Fe trail, the Spanish trail, and the Gila route ^ had 
been followed by frontiersmen into the promised 
land of the Pacific coast and the southwest. In 
the course of ten years, not only had the principal 
secrets of the topography of the Rocky Mountains, 
the Great Basin, the passes across the Sierra Neva- 
das been revealed, but also the characteristics of 
the Spanish-American settlements of California and 
the Rio Grande region. Already pioneers sought 
Texas, and American colonization was prepar- 
ing for another and greater conquest of the wilder- 
ness. 

The interest of the United States government in 
the far west in this period was shown in explora- 
tion and diplomacy. Calhoun projected an exten- 
sion of the forts of the United States well up the 
Missouri into the Indian country, partly as protec- 
tion to the traders and partly as a defence against 

' Gregg, Commerce of the Prairies; Chittenden, Am. Fur Trade, 
II., chap. xxix. 

' Semple, Am,. Hist, arid its Geographic Conditions, chap. x. 

' Personal Narrative of James O. Pattie; H. H. Bancroft, Hist. 
of California, III., 162. 



126 



RISE OF THE NEW WEST 



[1818 



English aggressions. Two Yellowstone expeditions * 
were designed to promote these ends. The first of 
these, 181 9- 1820, was a joint military and scientific 
undertaking ; but the military expedition, attempt- 
ing to ascend the Missouri in steamboats, got no 
farther than Council Bluffs. Mismanagement, ex- 
travagance, and scandal attended the undertaking, 
and the enterprise was made an occasion for a 
political onslaught on Calhoun's management of the 
war department. 

The scientific expedition, under Major Long, of 
the United States Engineering Corps, ascended the 
Missouri in the Western Engineer, the first steam- 
boat which navigated those waters above St. Louis 
— a stern-wheeler, with serpent-mouthed figure-head, 
through which the steam escaped, bringing terror 
to the savages along the banks. The expedition 
advanced far up the South Platte, discovered Long's 
Peak, and camped near the site of Denver. Thence 
the party passed to La Junta, Colorado, whence it 
broke into two divisions, one of which descended 
the Arkansas; the other reached the Canadian 
River (which it mistook for the Red) and descended 
to its junction with the Arkansas. The effort to 
push the military power of the government to the 
mouth of the Yellowstone failed, and the net result, 
on the military side, was a temporary post near the 
present site of Omaha. 

* Chittenden, Ant. Fur Trade, II., 562; Long's Expedition 
(Early Western Travels, XIV.-XVII.). 



1825] THE FAR WEST 127 

The most important effect of the expedition was 
to give currency to Long's description of the coun- 
try through which he passed as the "Great Ameri- 
can Desert," unfit for cultivation and uninhabi- 
table by agricultural settlers. The whole of the 
region between the Missouri River and the Rocky 
j\Iountains seemed to him adapted as a range for 
buffalo, "calculated to serve as a barrier to pre- 
vent too great an extension of our population west- 
ward," and to secure us against the incursions of 
enemies in that quarter,* A second expedition, in 
1825, under General Atkinson and Major O 'Fal- 
lon, reached the mouth of the Yellowstone, hav- 
ing made treaties with various Indian tribes on the 
way. 

In the mean time, Congress and the president were 
busy with the question of Oregon. By the con- 
vention of 1 81 8, with Great Britain, the northern 
boundary of the United States was carried from the 
Lake of the Woods to the Rocky Mountains, along 
the forty-ninth parallel. Beyond the mountains, 
the Oregon country was left open, for a period of 
ten years, to joint occupation of both powers, with- 
out prejudice to the claims of either. Having thus 
postponed the Oregon question, the secretary of 
state, John Quincy Adams, turned to his Spanish re- 
lations. Obliged by Monroe to relinquish our claim 
to Texas in the treaty of 181 9, by which we obtained 
Florida, he insisted on so drawing our boundary -line 

* Long's Expedition {Early Western Travels, XVII.), 147, 148. 

VOL. XIV. 10 



128 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1819 

in the southwest as to acquire Spain's title to the 
Pacific north of the forty-second parallel, and to the 
lands that lay north and east of the irregular line 
from the intersection of this parallel with the Rocky 
Mountains to the Sabine. Adams was proud of se- 
curing this line to the Pacific Ocean, for it was the 
first recognition by an outside power of our rights 
in the Oregon country.* 

Although Russia put forward large and exclusive 
claims north of the fifty-first parallel, which we chal- 
lenged, the contest for Oregon lay between England 
and the United States. At the close of 1820, Floyd, 
of Virginia, moved in the House of Representatives 
to inquire into the feasibility of the occupation of 
the Columbia River ; and early the next year ^ a 
committee report was brought in, discussing the 
American rights. Floyd's bill provided for the mili- 
tary occupation of the Columbia River, donation of 
lands to actual settlers, and control of the Indians. 
No vote was reached, however, and it was not until 
the close of 1822 that the matter secured the atten- 
tion of Congress. 

Whatever may have been his motives, Floyd 
stated with vividness the significance of western 
advance in relation to the Pacific coast. He showed 
that, while in 1755, nearly a hundred and fifty years 

' Treaties and Conventions (ed. of 1889), 416, 1017; Babcock, 
Am. Nationality (Am. Nation, XIII.), chap, xvi.; J. Q. Adams, 
Memoirs, IV., 275. 

'Annals of Cong., 16 Cong., 2 Sess., 945; J. Q. Adams, Me' 
tnoirs, v., 238, 243-260. 



i822] THE FAR WEST 129 

after the foundation of Jamestown, the population 
of Virginia had spread but three hundred miles into 
the interior of the country, during the last forty- 
three years population had spread westward more 
than a thousand miles. He recalled the days when 
more than a month was required to furnish Kentucky 
with eastern goods, by way of Pittsburg, and when 
it required a voyage of over a month to pass from 
Louisville to New Orleans and nearly three months 
for the upward voyage. This had now been short- 
ened by steamboat to seven days down and sixteen 
days up. From these considerations and the time 
from St. Louis to the mouth of the Columbia by 
steamboat and wagon, he argued that Oregon was 
no more distant from St. Louis in 1822 than St. 
Louis was twenty years before from Philadelphia. 
The fur-trade, the whale and seal fisheries, the 
trade with China, and the opportunity for agri- 
cultural occupation afforded by Oregon were all set 
forth. 1 

Against the proposal, his opponents argued in- 
expediency rather than our treaties with Great 
Britain. Tracy, of New York, doubted the value 
of the Oregon country, and, influenced perhaps 
by Long's report, declared that "nature has fixed 
limits for our nation; she has kindly introduced 
as our Western barrier, mountains almost inacces- 
sible, whose base she has skirted with irreclaimable 
deserts of sand."* In a later debate, Smyth, of 

* Annals of Cong., 17 Cong., 2 Sess., 397. * Ibid., 590. 



130 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1822 

Virginia, amplified this idea by a proposal to limit 
the boundaries of the United States, so that it 
should include but one or two tiers of states be- 
yond the Mississippi. He would remove the Ind- 
ians beyond this limit, and, if American settlements 
should cross it, they might be in alliance with, or 
under the protection of, the United States, but out- 
side of its bounds/ 

Baylies, of Massachusetts, declared that there were 
living witnesses "who have seen a population of 
scarcely six hundred thousand swelled into ten mill- 
ions; a population which, in their youth, extended 
scarcely an hundred miles from the ocean, spreading 
beyond the mountains of the West, and sweeping 
down those mighty waters which open into regions 
of such matchless fertility and beauty." "Some 
now within these walls may, before they die, witness 
scenes more wonderful than these ; and in aftertimes 
may cherish delightful recollections of this day, 
when America, almost shrinking from the ' shadows 
of coming events,' first placed her feet upon un- 
trodden ground, scarcely daring to anticipate the 
grandeur which awaited her." Tucker, of Virginia, 
agreed that settlement "marches on, with the in- 
creasing rapidity of a fire, and nothing will stop it 
until it reaches the shores of the Pacific," which he 
estimated would be by 1872. But he was loath 
to see it accelerated, believing that the people 
on the east and the west side of the Rocky Moun- 

' Register of Debates, 18 Cong., 2 Sess., I., 37. 



i822] THE FAR WEST 131 

tains would have a permanent separation of in- 
terests.* 

Nor were even western men sanguine that the 
nation could retain the Pacific coast as an integral 
part of its vast empire. Senator Benton, of Missouri, 
was the congressional champion of the far west. 
Born in interior North Carolina, he had followed 
the frontier to Tennessee, and then, after killing his 
man in a duel and exchanging pistol-shots in a free 
fight with Jackson, he removed to the new frontier 
at St. Louis. Pedantic and ponderous, deeply read 
in curious historical lore, in many ways he was not 
characteristic of the far west, but in the coarse 
vigor with which he bore down opposition by abuse, 
and in the far horizon line of the policies he ad- 
vocated, he thoroughly represented its traits. 

Familiar as he was with frontier needs and aspira- 
tions, he urged the United States to block England's 
control of the northwest, and to assert title to the 
Oregon territory, with the idea of ultimately found- 
ing a new and independent American nation there. 
It is true that he admitted that along the ridge of 
the Rocky Mountains "the western limit of this 
republic should be drawn, and the statue of the 
fabled god Terminus should be raised upon its high- 
est peak, never to be thrown down," ^ 

Nevertheless, in his utterances the ideal of expan- 
sion was not to be mistaken. He spoke bravely in 

^Annals of Cong., 17 Cong., 2 Sess., 422. 
' Register of Debates, I., 712. 



132 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1823 

favor of the protection and extension of the fur- 
trade,* pointing out that inasmuch as England occu- 
pied Oregon, she would, under the law of nations, 
have the right of possession until the question of 
sovereignty were decided. He warned his country- 
men, in 1823, that Great Britain would monopolize 
the Pacific Ocean, and by obtaining control of the 
Rocky Mountain fur-trade would be able to launch 
the Indians of the north and west against the fron- 
tiers of Missouri and Arkansas, Illinois and Michi- 
gan, upon the first renewal of hostilities between the 
United States of America and the king of Great 
Britain.' 

Benton believed that, within a century, a popula- 
tion greater than that of the United States of 1820 
would exist on the west side of the Rocky Moun- 
tains; and he saw in the occupation of the north- 
west coast the means of promoting a trade between 
the valley of the Mississippi, the Pacific Ocean, and 
Asia. Upon the people of eastern Asia, he thought, 
the establishment of a civilized power on the oppo- 
site coast of America would produce great benefits. 
"Science, liberal principles in government, and the 
true religion, might cast their lights across the inter- 
vening sea. The valley of the Columbia might be- 
come the granary of China and Japan, and an outlet 
to their imprisoned and exuberant population. . . . 
Russia and the legitimates menace Turkey, Persia, 

' Annals of Cong., 17 Cong., i Sess.. I., 416; cf. ibid., 18 Cong., 
I Sess.. I., 456. ^ Ibid., 17 Cong., 2 Sess., 246-251. 



1823] THE FAR WEST 133 

China, and Japan ; they menace them for their riches 
and dominions; the same Powers menace the two 
Americas for the popular forms of their Govern- 
ments. To my mind the proposition is clear, that 
Eastern Asia and the two Americas, as they have 
become neighbors, should become friends."* 

With true western passion he denounced the 
relinquishment of Texas by the treaty of 18 19. 
"The magnificent valley of the Mississippi is ours," 
he proclaimed, "with all its fountains, springs, and 
floods and woe to the statesman who shall under- 
take to surrender one drop of its water, one inch of 
its soil, to any foreign power." He was ready for 
a war with Spain, believing that it would give the 
United States the Floridas and Cuba, "the geo- 
graphical appurtenance of the valley of the Missis- 
sippi"; that it would free the New from the Old 
World; and that it would create a cordon of repub- 
lics across the two continents of North and South 
America. He pointed to the west as the route to 
the east — the long-sought way to India; and, in 
imagination, he outlined the states to be laid off 
" from the center of the valley of the Mississippi to 
the foot of the shining mountains." "It is time," 
he wrote, " that Western men had some share in the 
destinies of this republic." ^ 

» Register of Debates, I., 712. ' Meigs, Benton, g8, gg,ci. gi. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE CRISIS OF 1819 AND ITS RESULTS 
(1819-1820) 

IN 1820 the United States had a population of 
about nine and one-half millions ; in 1830, nearly 
thirteen millions. It was spread out from east to 
west like a page in the history of society. On the 
Atlantic seaboard were the centres of American 
civilization that had grown up in colonial days in 
close touch with Europe. From this region of com- 
merce and manufacture, the nation, on its march 
towards the west, changed through successive types 
of industrial life until in the Rocky Mountains the 
frontier fur-trader mingled with the Indians. The 
successive stages of social evolution which at first 
were exhibited in narrow belts on the Atlantic coast 
had now spread nearly across the continent.* 

Not only was the country vast in extent, it was 
rapidly growing. In the decade the nation increased 
its population by over three million and a quarter 
inhabitants, an addition which nearly equalled the 
whole population of any one of the three great sec- 

' Turner, "Significance of the Frontier," in Am. Hist. Assoc, 
Report 1893, pp. 200, 206, 208. 



1819] CRISIS OF 1819 135 

tions, the middle states, the south, and the west. 
As traveller after traveller passed o\'er the routes of 
his predecessor in this period, reporting the life by 
the wayside and in the towns, we can almost see 
American society unfolding with startling rapidity 
under our gaze; farms become hamlets, hamlets 
grow into prosperous cities ; the Indian and the for- 
ests recede; new stretches of wilderness come into 
view in the farther west, and we see the irresistible 
tide of settlement flowing towards the solitudes. 

Nevertheless, at the opening of our survey the 
nation was in the gloom of the panic of 18 19. This 
was brought on by the speculative reaction that 
immediately followed the war, when the long-pent- 
up crops of cotton found a market at the extraordi- 
nary price of nearly thirty cents a pound, and as high 
as seventy-eight dollars per acre was bid for gov- 
ernment land in the offices of the southwest.^ The 
policy of the government fostered reckless purchases 
of public land. In the critical times of the closing 
years of the war, the treasury agreed to accept the 
notes of state banks in payment for lands, on condi- 
tion that these banks should resume specie payment ; 
and then the banks, while taking only nominal steps 
towards resumption, loaned their paper freely to the 
settlers and speculators who wished to invest in the 
public domain. 

Under the credit system already mentioned, the 
pioneer was tempted to exhaust his funds in making 
* Annals of Cong., 16 Cong., i Sess., 446. 



136 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1816 

his first partial payment, and to rely upon loans 
from some "wild cat" bank wherewith to complete 
the purchase of the hundred and sixty acres, the 
smallest tract offered under the terms of the law; 
planters, relying equally on the state banks, bought 
great tracts of land at absurd prices; speculators, 
tempted by the rapid rise in land values and by the 
ease of securing loans, purchased large quantities 
in the hope of selling before it became necessary to 
complete their payment. On the seaboard, extrav- 
agance abounded as a reaction from the economies 
of war times, imported manufactures found a ready 
market, and the domestic factories were in distress. 

While state banks greatly multiplied and expanded 
their circulation freely to meet the demands of bor- 
rowers,^ the United States Bank not only failed to 
check the movement, but even contributed to it. 
After a dance of speculation, the bank, in the sum- 
mer of 1 81 8, was facing ruin, and it took drastic 
means to save itself. Its measures compelled the 
state banks to redeem their notes in specie or close 
their doors.'' 

By the spring of 181 9 the country was in the 
throes of a panic. State-bank issues were reduced 
from one hundred million dollars in 181 7 to forty- 
five millions in 181 9. Few banks in the south and 



» Sumner, Hist, of Banking, I., chaps, iv.-vi. 

*Catterall, Second Bank, chap, iii.; Dewey, Financial Hist. 
of the U. S., chap, vii,; Babcock, Am. Nationality (Am. Nation, 
XIII.), chap. xiii. 



1819] CRISIS OF 18x9 137 

west were able to redeem their notes in specie be- 
fore 1822; but they pressed their debtors harshly. 
Staple productions fell to less than half of their for- 
mer price ; land values declined fifty to seventy per 
cent. ; manufacturers were in distress ; laborers were 
out of work; merchants were ruined.* The condi- 
tions are illustrated in the case of Cincinnati. By 
the foreclosure of mortgages, the national bank 
came to own a large part of the city — hotels, coffee- 
houses, warehouses, stables, iron foundries, resi- 
dences, and vacant lots. "All the flourishing cities 
of the West," cried Benton, "are mortgaged to this 
money power. They may be devoured by it at any 
moment. They are in the jaws of the monster!" 
Throughout the south and west the bank became 
familiarly known as The Monster.^ 

Even in the days of its laxity the national bank 
was obnoxious in many quarters of the country. 
By the state constitution of 18 16 Indiana attempted 
to prevent the establishment within its limits of any 
bank not chartered by the state ; and Illinois incor- 
porated a similar provision in her constitution of 
1 81 8. Between 181 7 and 1819 Maryland, Tennes- 
see, Georgia, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Ohio 
all passed acts taxing the United States Bank.' 
Ohio, defying the decision of the supreme court in 



* J. Q. Adams, Memoirs, IV., 375; Jefferson, Writings, X., 
257; Benton, View, I., 5; Niles' Register, XVI., 114; Hodgson, 
Travels, II., 128; Sumner, Hist, of Banking, I., chaps, vii., viii. 

' Catterall, Second Bank, 67. ' Ibid., 64, 65. 



138 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1818 

the case of McCulloch vs. Maryland, which asserted 
the constitutionality of the bank and denied to the 
states the right to tax it, forcibly collected the tax 
and practically outlawed the bank.^ 

From the beginning of our history the frontier 
had been a debtor region, always favorable to an 
expansion of the currency and to laws to relieve the 
debtor class. It was but the continuation of an old 
practice when the western legislatures in this time 
of stringency attempted measures of relief for their 
citizens. Kentucky's "litter" of forty banks char- 
tered in the session of 1818-1819 had been forced to 
the wall by the measures of the national bank. Af- 
ter the panic, Kentucky repealed the charters of these 
banks and incorporated the Bank of the Common- 
wealth of Kentucky, an institution without stock- 
holders and under officers elected by the legislature 
and paid by the state. Its notes were assigned to 
the counties in proportion to the taxable property, 
to be loaned on mortgage securities to those who 
needed them "for the purpose of paying his, her or 
their just debts," or to purchase products for expor- 
tation. The only real capital of the bank was a 
legislative appropriation of seven thousand dollars 
to buy the material and plates for printing notes. 
In short, the treasury of the state was used as a 
kind of land bank of the sort favored in colonial 
days for the relief of the debtors.^ The legislature 

' See chap, xv., below. 

* Cf. Greene, Provincial America (Am. Nation, VI.), chap. xvii. 



i826] CRISIS OF 1819 139 

then passed a replevin law giving the debtor a delay 
of two years to satisfy an execution, in case the 
creditor refused to accept notes of the Bank of the 
Commonwealth of Kentucky as payment ; otherwise 
the debtor received an extension of but one year. 
By another law, land could not be sold under execu- 
tion to pay a debt unless it brought three-fourths of 
its value as appraised by a board of neighbors, 
usually themselves debtors and interested in sup- 
porting values. 

In 1823 the court of appeals of Kentucky de- 
clared the replevin and stay laws unconstitutional. 
In retaliation the legislature, in December, 1824, re- 
pealed the law establishing the court of appeals, and 
a new court was created favorable to the "relief 
system." This act the old court also declared un- 
constitutional, and a contest followed between the 
"old court" and the "new court" parties, which 
lasted until 1826, when the "old court," "anti- 
relief" party was victorious. In the mean time, 
similar relief measures had been passed in Tennes- 
see, Illinois, Missouri, and other western states.^ 

The distress brought about by the panic of 1819, 
the popular antagonism to banks in general, and 
especially to the Bank of the United States, as 
" engines of aristocracy, " oppressive to the common 
people, and the general discontent with the estab- 

* Sumner, Hist, of Banking, I., chap, x.; ibid., 122, 146, 157, 
161; Durrett, Centenary of Louisville; McMaster, United States, 
v., 160. 



I40 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [i8i8 

lished order, had, as we have seen, produced a move- 
ment comparable to the populistic agitation of our 
own time. 

Upon the general government the first effect of 
this period of distress was a general reduction of 
the revenue. Imports fell from about $121,000,000 
in 1 81 8 to $87,000,000 in 1819. Customs receipts, 
which in 181 6 were over $36,000,000, were but 
$13,000,000 in 1 82 1. Receipts for public lands, 
which amounted to $3,274,000 in 1819, were but 
$1,635,000 in 1820. In December, 1819, Crawford, 
the secretary of the treasury, was obliged to an- 
nounce a deficit which required either a reduction 
in expenditures or an increase in revenue. Congress 
provided for two loans, one of $3,000,000 in 1820, 
and another of $5,000,000 in 1821. A policy of 
retrenchment was vigorously instituted, levelled 
chiefly at the department of war. Internal im- 
provement schemes which had been urged in Con- 
gress in 1 81 8 were now temporarily put to rest. 
With the year 1822, however, conditions brightened, 
and the treasury began a long term of prosperity.^ 

One of the most important results of the crisis 
was the complete reorganization of the system of 
disposal of the public lands. The public domain was 
more than a source of revenue to the general gov- 
ernment; it was one of the most profoundly influ- 
ential factors in shaping American social conditions. 
The settler who entered the wilderness with but a 

1 Dewey, Financial Hist, of the U. S., 168. 



i82o] CRISIS OF 1819 141 

small capital, or who became a squatter on the pub- 
lic lands without legal title, was impatient with the 
policy which made revenue the primary consider- 
ation of the government. Benton expressed this 
view in 1826,* when he said: "I speak to statesmen, 
and not to compting clerks; to Senators, and not 
to QucBstors of provinces ; to an assembly of legisla- 
tors, and not to a keeper of the King's forests. I 
speak to Senators who know this to be a Republic, 
not a Monarchy; who know that the public lands 
belong to the People and not to the Federal Gov- 
ernment." The effect of the credit system had been, 
as we have seen, to stimulate speculation and to 
plunge the settlers deeply in debt to the general 
government. 

By 1820 these payments for the public lands were 
over twenty-two million dollars in arrears. Relief 
measures passed by Congress from time to time had 
extended the period of payment and made other 
concessions. Now the government had to face the 
problem of reconstructing its land laws or of con- 
tinuing the old credit system and relentlessly expel- 
ling the delinquent purchasers from their hard-won 
homes on the public domain. Although the legal 
title remained in the government, the latter alter- 
native was so obviously dangerous and inexpedi- 
ent that Congress passed two new acts. The first ^ 
(April 24, 1820) reduced the price of land from 

* Register of Debates, 19 Cong., i Sess., I., 727. 

* U . S. Statutes at Large, III., 566. 



142 



RISE OF THE NEW WEST 



[1820 



two dollars to one dollar and twenty-five cents per 
acre, abolished the system of credit, and provided 
that lands might be purchased in multiples of eighty 
acres. Thus the settler with one hundred dollars 
could secure full title to a farm. This was followed 
by a relief act (March 2, 1821), recommended by 
Secretary Crawford,^ allowing previous purchasers 
to rehnquish their claims to land for which they had 
not paid, and apply payments already made to full 
purchase of a portion of the land to be retained 
by the buyer, all overdue interest to be remitted.^ 
It is significant that this system was not unlike the 
relief system which had been so popular in the 
west. 

This adjustment of the land question by no 
means closed the agitation. A few years later Ben- 
ton repeatedly urged Congress to graduate the price 
of public lands according to their real value, and to 
donate to actual settlers lands which remained un- 
sold after they had been offered at fifty cents an 
acre.' The argument rested chiefly on the large 
number of men unable to secure a farm even under 
the cheaper price of 1820; the great quantity of 
public land which remained unsold after it had been 
offered; the advantage to the revenues from filling 
the vacant lands with a productive population ; and 
the injustice to the western states, which found them- 



* Am. State Paps., Finance, III., 551, 718; U. S. Statutes at 
Large, III., 566. 'Ibid., III., 612. 

• Speech in the Senate, May 16, 1826, Meigs, Benton, 165-170 



i82o] CRISIS OF 1819 143 

selves unable to obtain revenue by taxing unsold 
pubHc lands and which were limited in their power 
of eminent domain and jurisdiction as compared 
with the eastern states, which owned their public 
lands. In this agitation lay the germs of the later 
homestead system, as well as of the propositions to 
relinquish the federal public lands to the states 
within which they lay. 

With manufacturers in distress, thousands of oper- 
atives out of employment, and the crops of parts of 
the middle states and the west falling in price to a 
point where it hardly paid to produce them, an 
appeal to Congress to raise the duties established 
by the tariff of 181 6 * was inevitable. Hence, in the 
spring of 1820 a new tariff bill was presented by 
Baldwin, of Pennsylvania, the member from Pitts- 
burg. He came from a city which felt the full 
effects of the distress of the manufacturers, especially 
those of iron and glass, and which was one of the 
important centres of the great grain-raising area of 
the middle states and the Ohio Valley. 

Baldwin believed that the time had arrived when, 
** all the great interests of the country being equally 
prostrate, and one general scene of distress pervad- 
ing all its parts," there should be a common effort 
to improve conditions by a new tariff, intended not 
for the sake of restoring the depleted treasury, but 
distinctly for protection. Its advocates proposed 
to meet the failure of the system of revenue, not by 

* Babcock, Am. Nationality (Ant. Nation, XIII.), chap. xiv. 

VOL. XIV. — 11 



144 



RISE OF THE NEW WEST 



[1820 



encouraging importations, but by internal taxes and 
excises on the manufactured goods protected by the 
impost. Additional revenue would be secured by 
higher duties on sugar, molasses, coffee, and salt. 
The bill increased ad valorem duties by an amount 
varying from twenty-five to sixty-six per cent, ad- 
ditional. For woollen and cotton manufactures the 
rate of additional duty was about one-third ; on 
hemp, an important product in Kentucky, about 
two-thirds. Duty on forged iron bars was increased 
from seventy-five cents to one dollar and twenty- 
five cents per hundred -weight. On many other arti- 
cles the increase of duty amounted to from twenty 
to one hundred per cent. 

Naturally the home-market argument played an 
important part in the debates. It was relied upon 
especially by Henry Clay in his closing speech,* in 
which he argued that the rapidity of growth of the 
United States as compared with Europe made the 
ratio of the increase of her capacity of consumption 
to that of our capacity of production as one to four. 
Already he thought Europe was showing a want of 
capacity to consume our surplus; in his opinion, 
cotton, tobacco, and bread-stuffs had already reached 
the maximum of foreign demand. From this he 
argued that home manufactures should be encour- 
aged to consume the surplus, and that some por- 
tion of American industry should be diverted from 
agriculture to manufacturing. 

* Annals of Cong., i6 Cong., i Sess., II., 2034. 



i82o] • CRISIS OF 1819 145 

Industrial independence also required this action. 
England had recently imposed new duties on wool 
and cotton, and her corn laws contributed to limit 
her demand for our flour. " I am, too," he said, "a 
friend of free trade, but it must be a free trade of 
perfect reciprocity. If the governing considerations 
were cheapness; if national independence were to 
weigh nothing ; if honor nothing; why not sub- 
sidize foreign powers to defend us?" He met the 
argument of the deficiency of labor and of the dan- 
ger of developing overcrowded and pauperized man- 
ufacturing centres by reasoning that machinery 
would enable the Americans to atone for their lack 
of laborers ; and that while distance and attachment 
to the native soil would check undue migration of 
laborers to the west, at the same time the danger of 
congestion in the east would be avoided by the at- 
traction of the cheap western lands. 

Lowndes, of South Carolina, who with Calhoun 
had been one of the prominent supporters of the 
tariff in 1816, now made the principal speech in op- 
position: he denied the validity of the argument in 
favor of a home market and contended that the 
supply of domestic grain would in any case exceed 
the demand; and that, however small the export, 
the price of the portion sent abroad would determine 
that of the whole. It is important to observe that 
the question of constitutionality was hardly raised. 
The final vote in the House (April 29, 1820) stood 
gr to 78. New England gave 18 votes in favor 



146 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

and 17 opposed; the middle region, including Del- 
aware, gave 56 votes for and i vote against; the 
south, including Maryland and her sister states on 
the southern seaboard, gave 5 votes in favor and 
50 opposed. The northwest gave its 8 votes in 
favor, and the southwest, including Kentucky, gave 
4 votes in favor and 10 opposed. The vote of New 
England was the most divided of that of any sec- 
tion. From the manufacturing states of Connecticut 
and Rhode Island but one member, a Connecticut 
man, voted in opposition to the bill. The only 3 
negative votes from Massachusetts proper came 
from the commercial region of Boston and Salem. 
That portion of Massachusetts soon to become the 
state of Maine gave 4 votes in opposition and only 
2 in favor, the latter coming from the areas least 
interested in the carrying -trade. New Hampshire 
and Vermont gave their whole vote in opposition, 
except for one affirmative from Vermont, Ken- 
tucky's vote was 4 in favor to 3 opposed. Speaker 
Clay not voting. 

In general, the distribution of the vote shows that 
the maritime interests united with the slave-holding 
planters, engaged in producing tobacco, cotton, and 
sugar, in opposition. On the other side, the manu- 
facturing areas joined with the grain and wool rais- 
ing regions of the middle and western states to sup- 
port the measure. From the states of New York, 
New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Ohio, Indiana, 
and Illinois, casting altogether 65 votes, but one 



i82o] CRISIS OF 1819 147 

man voted against the bill, and he was burned in 
effigy by his constituents and resigned the same 
year. Of the 53 votes cast by the south and south- 
west, outside of the border states of Maryland and 
Kentucky, there were but 5 affirmative votes. It 
is seen, therefore, that in the House of Representa- 
tives, on the tariff issue, the middle states and the 
Ohio Valley were combined against the south and 
southwest, while New England's influence was nul- 
lified by her division of interests. By a single vote, 
on a motion to postpone, the measure failed in the 
Senate ; but the struggle was only deferred. 

The most important aspect of the panic of 1819 
was its relation to the forces of unrest and demo- 
cratic change that were developing in the United 
States. Calhoun and John Quincy Adams, convers- 
ing in the spring of 1820 upon politics, had the 
gloomiest apprehensions. There had been, within 
two years, Calhoun said, " an immense revolution of 
fortunes in every part of the Union ; enormous num- 
bers of persons utterly ruined; multitudes in deep 
distress; and a general mass of disaffection to the 
Government not concentrated in any particular di- 
rection, but ready to seize upon any event and look- 
ing out anywhere for a leader." They agreed that 
the Missouri question and the debates on the tariff 
were merely incidental to this state of things, and 
that this vague but wide-spread discontent, caused 
by the disordered circumstances of individuals, had 
resulted in a general impression that there was some- 



148 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

thing radically wrong in the administration of the 
government.^ 

Although this impression was the result of deeper 
influences than those to which it was attributed by 
these statesmen, yet the crisis of 181 9, which bore 
with peculiar heaviness upon the west and south, 
undoubtedly aggravated all the discontent of those 
regions. To the historian the movement is pro- 
foundly significant, for ultimately it found its leader 
in Andrew Jackson. More immediately it led to the 
demand for legislation to prevent imprisonment for 
debt,* to debates over a national bankruptcy law,' 
to the proposal of constitutional amendments lead- 
ing to the diminution of the powers of the supreme 
court, to a reassertion of the sovereignty of the 
states,^ and to new legislation regarding the public 
lands and the tariff. The next few years bore clear 
evidence of the deep influence which this period of 
distress had on the politics and legislation of the 
country. 

* Adams, Memoirs, V., 128; cf. IV., 498. 

'See, for example, Annals of Cong., 16 Cong., 2 Sess., 1224; 
McMaster, United States, IV., 532-535. 

^Annals of Cong., 16 Cong., a Sess., I., 757, 759, 792, 1203 
et passim. * See chap, xviii., below. 



CHAPTER X 

THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE 
(1819-1821) 

IN the dark period of the commercial crisis of 1819, 
while Congress was considering the admission of 
Missouri, the slavery issue flamed out, and revealed 
with startling distinctness the political significance 
of the institution, fateful and ominous for the na- 
tion, transcending in importance the temporary 
financial and industrial ills. 

The advance of settlement in the United States 
made the slavery contest a struggle for power be- 
tween sections, marching in parallel columns into the 
west, each carrying its own system of labor.' By 
1 819 the various states of the north, under favorable 
conditions of climate and industrial life, had either 
completely extinguished slavery or were in the proc- 
ess of emancipation;^ and by the Ordinance of 1787 
the old Congress had excluded the institution in the 
territory north of the Ohio River. Thus Mason and 
Dixon's line and the Ohio made a boundary between 
the slave-holding and the free streams of population 

* For previous questions of slavery, see Channing, Jeffersonian 
System {Am. Nation, XII.), chap. viii. » See map, p. 6. 



I50 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1787 

that flowed into the Mississippi Valley. Not that 
this line was a complete barrier: the Ordinance of 
1787 was not construed to free the slaves already in 
the old French towns of the territory; and many 
southern masters brought their slaves into Ohio, In- 
diana, and Illinois by virtue of laws which provided 
for them under the fiction of indented servants.* 
Indeed, several efforts were made in the territory of 
Indiana at the beginning of the nineteenth century 
to rescind the prohibition of 1787 ; but to this peti- 
tion Congress, under the strange leadership of John 
Randolph, gave a negative;^ and, after a struggle 
between the southern slavery and antislavery ele- 
ments by which the state had been settled, Indiana 
entered the Union in 1816 as a free state, under an 
agreement not to violate the Ordinance of 1787. 

Illinois, on her admission in 181 8, also guaran- 
teed the provisions of the Ordinance of 1787, and, 
not without a contest, included in her constitution 
an article preventing the introduction of slavery, 
but so worded that the system of indenture of negro 
servants was continued in a modified form. The is- 
sue of slavery still continued to influence Illinois elec- 
tions, and, as the inhabitants saw well-to-do plant- 
ers pass with their slaves across the state to recruit 
the property and population of Missouri, a movement 
(i 823-1 824) in favor of revising their constitution 
so as to admit slavery required the most vigorous 

* Harris, Negro Servitude in III. ,10; Dunn , Indiana , chaps, ix. , x. 

* Ibid., chap, xii.; Hinsdale, Old Northwest, chap, xviii. 



1827] MISSOURI COMPROMISE 151 

opposition to hold the state to freedom. The leader 
of the antislavery forces in Illinois was a Virginian, 
Governor Coles (once private secretary to President 
Madison), who had migrated to free his slaves after 
he became convinced that it was hopeless to make 
the fight which Jefferson advised him to carry on in 
favor of gradual emancipation in his native state.* 
In both Indiana and Illinois, the strength of the 
opposition to slavery and indented servitude came 
from the poorer whites, particularly from the Quaker 
and Baptist elements of the southern stock, and 
from the northern settlers. 

In Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, ever 
since the decline of the tobacco culture, a strong 
opposition to slavery had existed, shown in the votes 
of those states on the Ordinance of 1787, and in the 
fact that as late as 1827 the great majority of the 
abolition societies of the United States were to be 
found in this region.^ But the problem of dealing 
with the free negro weighed upon the south. Even 
in the north these people were unwelcome. They 
frequently became a charge upon the community, 
and they were placed under numerous disabilities.' 

The idea of deporting freedmen from the United 



' Harris, Negro Servitude in III., chap. iv. ; Washbume, Coles, 
chaps, iii., v. 

"^ Dunn, Indiana, 190; 'Qsissetii,{n Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies, 
XVI., No. vi.; cf. Hart, Slavery and Abolition {Am. Nation, 
XVI.), chap. xi. 

^McMaster, United States, IV., 558; Gordy, Political Hist, of 
U. S., II., 405. 



152 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1816 

States found support both among the humanitarians, 
who saw in it a step towards general emancipation, 
and among the slave-holders who viewed the in- 
crease of the free negroes with apprehension. To 
promote this solution of the problem, the Coloniza- 
tion Society ^ was incorporated in 181 6, and it found 
support, not only from antislavery agitators like 
Lundy, who edited the Genius of Universal Emanci- 
pation at Baltimore, but also from slave-holders like 
Jefferson, Clay, and Randolph. It was the design 
of this society to found on the coast of Africa a 
colony of free blacks, brought from the United 
States. Although, after unsuccessful efforts, Li- 
beria was finally established in the twenties, with 
the assistance of the general government (but not 
under its jurisdiction), it never promoted state 
emancipation. Nevertheless, at first it met with 
much sympathy in Virginia, where in 1820 the gov- 
ernor proposed to the legislature the use of one- 
third of the state revenue as a fund to promote the 
emancipation and deportation of the negroes.' 

The unprofitableness of slavery in the border 
states, where outworn fields, the decline of tobacco 
culture, and the competition of western lands bore 
hard on the planter,' now became an argument in 

^McPherson, Liberia; McMaster, United States, IV., 556 et seq. 

' Jefferson, Writings (Ford's ed.), X., 173, 178; Niles' Register, 
XVII., 363; King, Life and Corresp. of King, VI., 342; Adams, 
Memoirs, IV., 293. 

• See chap. iv. above; Hart, Slavery and Abolition (Am. Nation^ 
XVI.). chap. iv. 



i82o] MISSOURI COMPROMISE 153 

favor of permitting slavery to pass freely into the 
new country of the west. Any limitation of the 
area of slavery would diminish the value of the 
slaves and would leave the old south to support, 
under increasingly hard conditions, the redundant 
and unwelcome slave population in its midst. The 
hard times from 1817 to 1820 rendered slave prop- 
erty a still greater burden to Virginia. Moreover, 
the increase of the proportion of slaves to whites, if 
slavery were confined to the region east of the Missis- 
sippi, might eventually make possible a servile in- 
surrection, particularly if foreign war should break 
out. All of these difficulties would be met, in the 
opinion of the south, by scattering the existing 
slaves and thus mitigating the evil without increas- 
ing the number of those in bondage. 

It was seen that the struggle was not simply one 
of morals and of rival social and industrial institu- 
tions, but was a question of political power between 
the two great and opposing sections, interested, on 
the one side, in manufacturing and in the raising of 
food products under a system of free labor; and, on 
the other, in the production of the great staples, 
cotton, tobacco, and sugar, by the use of slave labor. 
Already the southern section had shown its opposi- 
tion to tariff and internal improvements, which the 
majority of the northern states vehemently favored. 
In other words, the slavery issue was seen to be a 
struggle for sectional domination. 

At the beginning of the nation in 1790, the popu- 



154 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1800 

lation of the north and the south was almost ex- 
actly balanced. Steadily, however, the free states 
drew ahead, until in 1820 they possessed a popula- 
tion of 5,152,000 against 4,485,000 for the slave- 
holding states and territories; and in the House of 
Representatives, by the operation of the three-fifths 
ratio, the free states could muster 105 votes to but 
81 for the slave states. Thus power had passed 
definitely to the north in the House of Representa- 
tives. The instinct for self-preservation that led the 
planters to stand out against an apportionment in 
their legislatures which would throw power into the 
hands of non-slaveholders now led them to seek for 
some means to protect the interests of their minority 
section in the nation as a whole. The Senate offered 
such an opportunity: by the alternate admission of 
free and slave states from 1802 to 1818, out of the 
twenty-two states of the nation eleven were slave- 
holding and eleven free. If the south retained this 
balance, the Senate could block the action of the 
majority which controlled the lower House. 

Such was the situation when the application of 
Missouri for admission as a state in 181 9 presented to 
Congress the whole question of slavery beyond the 
Mississippi, where freedom and slavery had found a 
new fighting-ground. East of the Mississippi the Ohio 
was a natural dividing-line ; farther west there ap- 
peared no obvious boundary between slavery and 
freedom. By a natural process of selection, the 
valleys of the western tributaries of the Mississippi, 



1819] MISSOURI COMPROMISE 155 

as far north as the Arkansas and Missouri, in which 
slaves had been allowed while it was a part of French 
and Spanish Louisiana (no restraints having been 
imposed by Congress), received an increasing pro- 
portion of the slave-holding planters. It would, in 
the ordinary course of events, become the area of 
slave states. 

The struggle began in the House of Representa- 
tives, when the application of Missouri for state- 
hood was met by an amendment, introduced by 
Tallmadge of New York, February 13, 1819,* pro- 
viding that further introduction of slavery be pro- 
hibited, and that all children born within the state 
after admission should be free at the age of twenty- 
five years. ^ Tallmadge had already shown his atti- 
tude on this question when in 181 8 he opposed the 
admission of Illinois under its constitution, which 
seemed to him to make insufficient barriers to 
slavery. Brief as was the first Missouri debate, the 
whole subject was opened up by arguments to which 
later discussion added but little. The speaker, 
Henry Clay, in spite of the fact that early in his 
political career he had favored gradual emancipation 
in Kentucky, led the opposition to restriction. His 
principal reliance was upon the arguments that the 
evils of slavery would be mitigated by diffusion, and 
that the proposed restriction was unconstitutional. 
Tallmadge and Taylor, of New York, combated these 

^Annals of Cong., 15 Cong., 2 Sess., I., 1170. 

• See amended form in House Journal, 15 Cong., 2 Sess., 272. 



156 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1819 

arguments so vigorously and with such bold chal- 
lenge of the whole system of slavery in new terri- 
tories, that Cobb, of Georgia, declared, "You have 
kindled a fire which all the waters of the ocean can- 
not put out, which seas of blood can only extin- 
guish." ' 

The first clause of Tallmadge's motion was car- 
ried (February 16, 1819) by a vote of 87 to 76, and 
the second by 82 to 78.^ Taylor was emboldened 
to offer (February 18) to the bill for the organiza- 
tion of Arkansas territory an amendment by which 
slavery should be excluded, whereupon McLane, of 
Delaware, tentatively proposed that a line should 
be drawn west of the Mississippi, dividing the terri- 
tories between freedom and slavery. Thus early 
was the whole question presented to Congress. In 
the Senate, Tallmadge's amendment was lost (Feb- 
ruary 27) by a vote of 22 to 16, several northern 
senators adhering to the south; and Congress ad- 
journed without action.^ 

The issue was then transferred to the people, and 
in all quarters of the Union vehement discussions 
took place upon the question of imposing an anti- 
slavery restriction upon Missouri. Mass-meetings 
in the northern states took up the agitation, and 
various state legislatures, including Pennsylvania, 
New York, New Jersey, Ohio, and even the slave 
state of Delaware, passed resolutions with substan- 

^ Annals of Cong., 15 Con^., 2 Sess., I., 1204. *Ibid., 1214. 

* But Arkansas was organized as a territory without restriction. 



i8i9] MISSOURI COMPROMISE 157 

tial unanimity against the further introduction of 
slaves into the territories of the United States, and 
against the admission of new slave states. Penn- 
sylvania, so long the trusted ally of the south, in- 
voked her sister states "to refuse to covenant with 
crime" by spreading the "cruelties of slavery, from 
the banks of the Mississippi to the shores of the 
Pacific." From the south came equally insistent 
protests against restriction.* 

No argument in the debate in 181 9 was more ef- 
fective than the speech of Rufus King in the Sen- 
ate, which was widely circulated as a campaign 
document expressing the northern view. King's 
antislavery attitude, shown as early as 1785, when 
he made an earnest fight to secure the exclusion of 
slavery from the territories,^ was clearly stated in 
his constitutional argument in favor of restriction 
on Missouri, and his speech may be accepted as 
typical.' But it was also the speech of an old-time 
Federalist, apprehensive of the growth of western 
power under southern leadership. 

He held that, under the power of making all need- 
ful rules and regulations respecting the territory and 
other property of the United States, Congress had 
the right to prohibit slavery in the Louisiana pur- 

> Niles' Register, XVII., 296, 307, 334, 342-344, 395, 399, 400, 
416; Ames, State Docs, on Federal Relations, No. 5, p. 4. 

* McLaughlin, Confederation and Constitution (Am. Nation, X.) , 
chap. vii. 

' Niles' Register, XVII., 215; King, Life and Corresp. of King, 
VI., 690. 



158 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1819 

chase, which belonged to the United States in full 
dominion. Congress was further empowered, but 
not required, to admit new states into the Union. 
Since the Constitution contained no express pro- 
vision respecting slavery in a new state, Congress 
could make the perpetual prohibition of slavery a 
condition of admission. In support of this argu- 
ment, King appealed to the precedent of the Ordi- 
nance of 1787, and of the states of Ohio, Indiana, and 
Illinois, all admitted on the conditions expressed in 
that ordinance. In admitting the state of Louisiana 
in 181 2, a different group of conditions had been 
attached, such as the requirement of the use of the 
English language in judicial and legislative pro- 
ceedings. 

The next question was the effect of the Louisiana 
treaty, by which the United States had made this 
promise: "The inhabitants of the ceded territory 
shall be incorporated in the Union of the United 
States, and admitted as soon as possible, according 
to the principles of the Federal constitution, to the 
enjoyment of all the rights, advantages and immuni- 
ties of citizens of the United States ; and in the mean 
time they shall be maintained and protected in the 
free enjoyment of their liberty, property and the 
religion which they profess." ^ King contended 
that, by the admission of Missouri to the Union, its 
inhabitants would obtain all of the "federal" rights 
which citizens of the United States derived from its 

• t/. S. Treaties and Conventions, 332. 



i8i9] MISSOURI COMPROMISE 159 

Constitution, though not the rights derived from the 
constitutions and laws of the various states. In his 
opinion, the term property did not describe slaves, 
inasmuch as the terms of the treaty should be con- 
strued according to diplomatic usage, and not all 
nations permitted slavery. In any case, property ac- 
quired since the territory was occupied by the United 
States was not included in the treaty, and, therefore, 
the prohibition of the future introduction of slaves 
into Missouri would not affect its guarantees. 

Could Missouri, after admission, revoke the con- 
sent to the exclusion of slavery under its powers as a 
sovereign state ? Such action, King declared, would 
be contrary to the obligations of good faith, for even 
sovereigns were bound by their engagements. More- 
over, the judicial power of the United States would 
deliver from bondage any person detained as a slave 
in a state which had agreed, as a condition of admis- 
sion, that slavery should be excluded. 

Having thus set forth the constitutional princi- 
ples, King next took up the expediency of the exclu- 
sion of slavery from new states. He struck with 
firm hand the chord of sectional rivalry in his argu- 
ment against the injustice to the north of creating 
new slave-holding states, which would have a po- 
litical representation, under the "federal ratio," not 
possessed by the north. Under this provision for 
counting three-fifths of the slaves, five free persons 
in Virginia (so he argued) had as much power in the 
choice of representatives to Congress and in the 

VOL. XIV. — 12 



i6o RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1819 

appointment of presidential electors as seven free 
persons in any of the states in which slavery did 
not exist. The disproportionate power and influence 
allowed to the original slave-holding states was a 
necessary sacrifice to the establishment of the Con- 
stitution; but the arrangement was limited to the 
old thirteen states, and was not applicable to the 
states made out of territory since acquired. This 
argument had been familiar to New England ever 
since the purchase of Louisiana. Finally, he argued 
that the safety of the Union demanded the exclusion 
of slavery west of the Mississippi, where the exposed 
and important frontier needed a barrier of free citi- 
zens against the attacks of future assailants. 

To the southern mind. King's sectional appeal 
unblushingly raised the prospect of the rule of a free 
majority over a slave-holding minority, the down- 
fall of the ascendency so long held by the south, 
and the creation of a new Union, in which the 
western states should be admitted on terms of sub- 
ordination to the will of the majority, whose power 
would thus become perpetual.* 

When the next Congress met, in December, 181 9, 
the admission of Alabama was quickly completed; 
and the House also passed a bill admitting Maine 
to the Union, Massachusetts having agreed to this 
division of the ancient commonwealth, on condition 

' King, Life and Corresp. of King, YI., 205, 267, 279, 288, 329, 
339-344, 501; Jefiferson, Writings (Ford's ed.), X., 162, 172, 280; 
Tyler, Tylers, I., 316. 



i82o] MISSOURI COMPROMISE i6i 

that consent of Congress should be obtained prior to 
March 4, 1820. The Senate, quick to see the oppor- 
tunity afforded by the situation, combined the bill 
for the admission of Maine with that for the unre- 
stricted admission of Missouri, a proposition carried 
(February 16, 1820) by a vote of 23 to 21. Senatof 
Thomas, who represented Illinois, which, as we have 
seen, was divided in its interests on the question of 
slavery, and who, as the vote showed, could produce 
a tie in the Senate, moved a compromise amend- 
ment, providing for the admission of Missouri as a 
slave state and for the prohibition of slavery north 
of 36° 30' in the rest of the Louisiana purchase ; and 
on the next day his amendment passed the Senate 
by a vote of 34 to 10. 

The debate in the Senate was marked by another 
speech of Rufus King, just re-elected a senator from 
New York by an almost unanimous vote. With this 
prestige, and the knowledge that the states of Penn- 
sylvania and New York stood behind him, he reiter- 
ated his arguments with such power that John Quincy 
Adams, who listened to the debate, wrote in his diary 
that "the great slave-holders in the House gnawed 
their lips and clenched their fists as they heard him." ^ 

The case for the south was best presented by 
William Pinkney, of Maryland, the leader of the 
American bar, a man of fashion, but an orator of the 
first rank. His argument, on lines that the debates 

* Adams, Memoirs, IV., 522 ; see Cong. Globe, 30 Cong., 2 Sess., 
App. 63-67. 



i62 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

had made familiar, was stated with such eloquence, 
force, and graphic power that it produced the ef- 
fect of a new presentation. Waiving the question 
whether Congress might refuse admission to a state, 
he held that, if it were admitted, it was admitted 
into a union of equals, and hence could not be sub- 
jected to any special restriction.* Without denying 
the danger of the extension of slavery, he argued 
that it was not for Congress to stay the course of 
this dark torrent. "If you have power," said he, 
"to restrict the new states on admission, you may 
squeeze a new-born sovereign state to the size of a 
pigmy." There would be nothing to hinder Con- 
gress "from plundering power after power at the 
expense of the new states," until they should be left 
empty shadows of domestic sovereignty, in a union 
between giants and dwarfs, between power and 
feebleness. In vivid oratory he conjured up this 
vision of an unequal union, into which the new state 
would enter, "shorn of its beams," a mere servant 
of the majority. From the point of view of the 
political theory of a confederation, his contention 
had force, and the hot-tempered west was not likely 
to submit to an inferior status in the Union. Never- 
theless, the debates and votes in the Constitutional 
Convention of 1787 seem to show that the fathers of 
the Constitution intended to leave Congress free to 
impose limitations on the states at admission.^ 

• Annals of Cong., 16 Cong., i Sess., I., 389 et seq. 

* Elliot, Debates, V., 492. 



i82o] MISSOURI COMPROMISE 163 

In the mean time, the House of Representatives 
was continuing the discussion on the old lines. 
Although the arguments brought out little that had 
not been stated in the first Missouri debate, they 
were restated day after day with an amplitude and 
a bitterness of feeling that aggravated the hostility 
between the rival forces. Even under this provoca- 
tion, most southern members expressed their opinions 
on the morality and expediency of slavery in lan- 
guage that affords a strange contrast to their later 
utterances : in almost every case they lamented its 
existence and demanded its dispersion throughout 
the west as a means of alleviating their misfortune. 
Although most of the men who spoke on the point 
were from the regions where cotton was least culti- 
vated, yet even Reid, of Georgia, likened the south 
to an unfortunate man who " wears a cancer in his 
bosom." ^ Tyler of Virginia, afterwards president 
of the United States, characterized slavery as a dark 
cloud, and asked, "Will you permit the lightnings 
of its wrath to break upon the South when by the 
interposition of a wise system of legislation you 
may reduce it to a summer's cloud?" ^ John Ran- 
dolph, the ultra-southerner, was quoted as saying 
that all the misfortunes of his life were light in the 
balance when compared with the single misfortune 
of having been born a master of slaves. 

In addition to the argument of "mitigation by 

* Annals of Cong., 16 Cong., i Sess., I., 1025. 

* Ibid., II., 1391. 



i64 RIvSE OF THE NEW WEST fi82o 

diffusion," the south urged the injustice of exclud- 
ing its citizens from the territories by making it 
impossible for the southern planter to migrate 
thither with his property. On the side of the north, 
it was argued with equal energy that the spread of 
slaves into the west would inevitably increase their 
numbers and strengthen the institution. Since free 
labor was unable to work in the midst of slave labor, 
northern men would be effectively excluded from 
the territories which might be given over to slavery. 
Economic law, it was urged, would make it almost 
certain that, in order to supply the vast area which 
it was proposed to devote to slavery, the African 
slave-trade would be reopened. As the struggle 
waxed hot, as the arguments brought out with in- 
creasing clearness the fundamental differences be- 
tween the sections, threats of disunion were freely 
exchanged.* Even Clay predicted the existence of 
several new confederacies.^ Nor were the extrem- 
ists of the north unwilling to accept this alternative.^ 
But the danger of southern secession was dimin- 
ished because Monroe was ready to veto any bill 
which excluded slavery from Missouri.^ 

While still engaged in its own debates, the House 
received the compromise proposal from the Senate. 
At first the majority remained firm and refused to 



' Adams, Memoirs, V., 13, 53; Benton, Abridgment of Debates, 
XIII., 607. ^ Adams, Memoirs, IV., 526. 

^ King, Life and Corresp. of King, VI., 274, 286, 287, 387. 
* Cong. Globe, 30 Cong., 2 Sess., App. 67. 



i82o] MISSOURI COMPROMISE 165 

accept it.* March i, 1820, the House passed its own 
bill imposing the restriction on Missouri, by a vote 
of 91 to 82. By the efforts of the compromisers, 
however, a committee of conference was arranged, 
which on the very next day resulted in the sur- 
render of the House, The vote on striking out the 
restriction on Missouri was 90 to 87. New Eng- 
land gave 7 ayes to 33 nays; the middle states, 8 to 
46 ; the south cast 58 votes for striking out, and 
none against it; the northwest gave all its 8 votes 
against striking out the restriction; while the 17 
southwestern votes were solidly in favor of admitting 
Missouri as a slave state. 

Thus, while the southern phalanx in opposition 
remained firm, enough members were won over from 
the northern ranks to defeat the restrictionists. 
Some of these deserters^ from the northern cause 
were influenced by the knowledge that the admis- 
sion of Maine would fail without this concession; 
others, by the constitutional argument; others, by 
the fear of disunion ; and still others, by the appre- 
hension that the unity of the Democratic party was 
menaced by the new sectional alignment, which in- 
cluded among its leaders men who had been promi- 
nent in the councils of the Federalists. By the final 
solution, it was agreed (134 to 42) to admit Missouri 



* Woodbtim, in Am. Hist. Assoc, Report 1893, p. 251-297. 

^ See King, Life and Corresp. of King, VI., 291, 329; Benton, 
View, I., 10; Adams, Memoirs, V., 15, 307. Randolph applied 
to them the term "doughfaces." 



i66 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

as a slave state and Maine as a free state; while all 
of the rest of the territory possessed by the United 
States west of the Mississippi and north of 36° 30' 
was pledged to freedom. 

Yet the fate of the measure was uncertain, for 
some of Monroe's southern friends strongly urged 
him still to veto the compromise.* The president 
submitted to the cabinet the question whether Con- 
gress had the right to prohibit slavery in a territory, 
and whether the section of the Missouri bill which 
interdicted slavery forever in the territory north of 
36° 30' was applicable only to the territorial con- 
dition, or also to states made from the territory. 
John Quincy Adams notes in his diary that " it was 
unanimously agreed that Congress have the power 
to prohibit slavery in the Territories"; though he 
adds that neither Crawford, Calhoun, nor Wirt could 
find any express power to that effect given in the 
Constitution.' In order to avoid the difficulty aris- 
ing from the fact that Adams alone believed the 
word "forever" to apply to states as well as terri- 
tories, the president modified the question so that 
all would be able to answer that the act was con- 
stitutional, leaving each member to construe the 
section to suit himself. 

Although apparently the Missouri struggle was 
thus brought to a conclusion, it is necessary to take 
note of two succeeding episodes in the contest, 

^ Cong. Globe, 30 Cong., 2 Sess.,App. 64. 
'Adams, Memoirs, V., 5. 



i82o] MISSOURI COMPROMISE 167 

which immediately revived the whole question, em- 
bittered the antagonism, threatened the Union, and 
were settled by new compromises. In her constitu- 
tion, Missouri not only incorporated guarantees of 
a slavery system, but also a provision against the 
admission of free negroes to the state. Application 
for admission to the Union under this constitution 
in the fall of 1820 brought on a contest perhaps more 
heated and more dangerous to the Union than the 
previous struggle. Holding that Missouri's clause 
against free negroes infringed the provision of the 
federal Constitution guaranteeing the rights of citi- 
zens of the respective states, northern leaders re- 
opened the whole question by refusing to vote for 
the admission of Missouri with the obnoxious clause. 
Again the north revealed its mastery of the House, 
and the south its control of the Senate, and a dead- 
lock followed. Under the skilful management of 
Clay, a new compromise was framed, by which Mis- 
souri was required, through her legislature, to prom- 
ise that the objectionable clause should never be 
construed to authorize the passage of any laws by 
which any citizen of either of the states of the Union 
should be excluded from the enjoyment of any of the 
privileges and immunities to which such citizen was 
entitled under the Constitution of the United States. 
This Missouri accepted, but the legislature somewhat 
contemptuously added that it was without power to 
bind the state.* 

• Niles' Register, XX., 388, cf. 300. 



i68 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

While this debate was in progress, and the prob- 
lem of the status of Missouri, which had already es- 
tablished a constitution and claimed to be a state, 
was under consideration, the question of counting 
the Missouri vote in the presidential election of 1820 
was raised. For this a third compromise was framed 
by Clay, by which the result of the election was 
stated as it would be with and without Missouri's 
vote. Since Monroe had been elected by a vote 
all but unanimous, the result was in either case the 
same; this theoretical question, nevertheless, was 
fraught with dangerous possibilities. Missouri was 
finally admitted by the proclamation of President 
Monroe, dated August 10, 182 1, more than three 
years from the first application for statehood. 

In a large view of American history, the signifi- 
cance of this great struggle cannot be too highly 
emphasized. Although the danger passed by and 
the ocean became placid, yet the storm in many 
ways changed the coast-line of American politics 
and broke new channels for the progress of the na- 
tion. The future had been revealed to far-sighted 
statesmen, who realized that this was but the begin- 
ning, not the end, of the stiiiggle. "This momen- 
tous question," wrote Jefferson, "like a fire bell in 
the night, awakened and filled me with terror, I 
considered it at once as the knell of the Union. It 
is hushed, indeed, for the moment. But this is a 
reprieve only, not a final sentence. A geographical 
line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and 



i82i] MISSOURI COMPROMISE 169 

political, once conceived and held up to the angry 
passions of men, will never be obliterated ; and ev- 
ery new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper." ^ 

John Quincy Adams relates a contemporaneous 
conversation with Calhoun, in which the latter took 
the ground that, if a dissolution of the Union should 
follow, the south would be compelled to form an 
alliance, offensive and defensive, with Great Britain, 
though he admitted that it would be returning pret- 
ty much to the colonial state. When Adams, with 
unconscious prophecy of Sherman's march through 
Georgia, pressed Calhoun with the question whether 
the north, cut off from its natural outlet upon the 
ocean, "would fall back upon its rocks bound hand 
and foot, to starve, or whether it would not retain 
its powers of locomotion to move southward by 
land," Calhoun answered that the southern states 
would find it necessary to make their communities 
military.^ 

To Adams himself the present question was but 
a " title page to a great tragic volume. ' ' He believed 
that, if dissolution of the Union should result from 
the slavery question, it would be followed by univer- 
sal emancipation of the slaves, and he was ready to 
contemplate such a dissolution of the Union, upon 
a point involving slavery and no other, believing 
that "the Union might then be reorganized on the 
fundamental principle of emancipation." " This ob- 

' Jefferson, Wri/mg5 (Ford's ed.), X., 157. 
* Adams, Memoirs, IV., 530, 531. 



I70 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

ject," wrote he, "is vast in its compass, awful in its 
prospects, sublime and beautiful in its issue. A life 
devoted to it would be nobly spent or sacrificed." * 
Looking forward to civil war, he declared: "So 
glorious would be its final issue, that as God shall 
judge me I do not say that it is not to be desired." ^ 
But as yet he confided these thoughts to his diary. 

The south was far from contented with the com- 
promise, and her leading statesmen, Calhoun espe- 
cially, came bitterly to regret both the concession in 
the matter of admitting federal control over slavery 
in the territories, and the division of the Louisiana 
purchase into spheres of influence which left to the 
slave-holding section that small apex of the triangle 
practically embraced in Arkansas. While the north 
received an area capable of being organized into 
many free states, the south could expect from the 
remaining territory awarded her only one state. 

Among the immediate effects of the contest was 
its influence upon Monroe, who was the more ready 
to relinquish the American claim to Texas in the 
negotiations over Florida, because he feared that 
the acquisition of this southern province would 
revive the antagonism of the northern antislavery 
forces.' 

The south learned also the lesson that slavery 
needed defence against the power of the majority, 

' Adams, Memoirs, IV.. 531. * Ibid., V., 210. 

* Monroe, Writings, VI., 127; cf. Adams, Memoirs, V., 35, 
54, 68. 



y 



1821] MISSOURI COMPROMISE 171 

and that it must shape its political doctrine and its 
policy to this end. But it would be a mistake to 
emphasize too strongly the immediate effect in this 
respect. Slavery was not yet accepted as the foun- 
dation of southern social and economic life. The 
institution was still mentioned with regret by 
southern leaders, and there were still efforts in the 
border states to put it in the process of extinction. 
South Carolina leaders were still friendly to national 
power, and for several years the ruling party in 
that state deprecated appeals to state sovereignty.' 
In the next few years other questions, of an econom- 
ic and judicial nature, were even more influential, as 
a direct issue, than the slavery question. But the 
economic life of the south was based on slavery, and 
the section became increasingly conscious that the 
current of national legislation was shaped by the 
majority against their interests. Their political alli- 
ances in the north had failed them in the time of 
test, and the Missouri question disclosed the possi- 
bility of a new organization of parties threatening 
that southern domination which had swayed the 
Union for the past twenty years, ^ 

The slavery struggle derived its national signifi- 
cance from the west, into which expanding sections 
carried warring institutions. 

' See chap, xviii. below. 

'Adams, Memoirs, IV., 529; King, Life and Corresp. of King, 
VI., 501; Jeflferson, Writings, X., 175, 193 n.; cf. chap. xi. be- 
low; Hart, Slavery and Abolition (Am. Nation, XVI.) , chap, xviii. 



CHAPTER XI 

PARTY POLITICS 
(1820-1822) 

TO the superficial observer, politics might have 
seemed never more tranquil than when, in 1820, 
James Monroe received all but one of the electoral 
votes for his second term as president of the United 
States. One New Hampshire elector preferred John 
Quincy Adams, although he was not a candidate, 
and this deprived Monroe of ranking with Washing- 
ton in the unanimity of official approval. But in 
truth the calm was deceptive. The election of 1820 
was an armistice rather than a real test of political 
forces. The forming party factions were not yet 
ready for the final test of strength, most of the can- 
didates were members of the cabinet, and the re- 
election of Monroe, safe, conciliatory, and judi- 
cious, afforded an opportunity for postponing the 
issue. 

As we have seen, the Missouri contest had in it 
the possibility of a revolutionary division of the Re- 
publican party into two parties on sectional lines. 
The aged Jefferson, keen of scent for anything that 
threatened the ascendency of the triumphant democ- 



i82o] PARTY POLITICS 173 

racy, saw in the dissolution of the old alliance be- 
tween Virginia and the " fanaticized " Pennsylvania,* 
in the heat of the Missouri conflict, the menace of a 
revived Federalist party, and the loss of Virginia's 
northern following. So hotly did Virginia resent the 
Missouri Compromise, that while the question was 
still pending, in February, 1820, her legislative cau- 
cus, which had assembled to nominate presidential 
electors, indignantly adjourned on learning that 
Monroe favored the measure. "I trust in God," 
said H. St. George Tucker, "if the president does 
sign a bill to that effect, the Southern people will 
be able to find some man who has not committed 
himself to our foes; for such are, depend on it, 
the Northern Politicians."^ But the sober second 
thought of Virginia sustained Monroe. On the other 
side, Rufus King believed that the issue of the Mis- 
souri question would settle "forever the dominion 
of the Union." "Old Mr. Adams," said he, "as he 
is the first, will on this hypothesis be the last Presi- 
dent from a free state." ^ 

The truth is that the individual interests of the 
south were stronger in opposing than those of the 
north in supporting a limitation of slavery;"* the 
northern phalanx had hardly formed before it began 

'Jefferson, Writings (Ford's ed.), X., 161, 171, 172, 177, 179, 
192, 193 «., 279; King, Life and Corresp. of King, VI., 279, 282, 
290: Cong. Globe, 30 Cong., 2 Sess., App. 63-67. 

^William Qnd Alary College Quarterly, X., 11, 15. 

*King, Life and Corresp. of King, 267; cf. Adams, Memoirs, 
IV., 528. ^ Adams, Memoirs, IV., 533. 



174 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

to dissolve.* Nevertheless, the Missouri question 
played some part in the elections in most of the 
states. In Pennsylvania, under the leadership of 
Duane, the editor of the Aurora, electors favorable 
to Clinton were nominated on an antislavery ticket,^ 
but, outside of Philadelphia and the adjacent dis- 
trict, this ticket received but slight support. With 
few exceptions, the northern congressmen who had 
voted with the south failed of re-election. 

The elections in the various states in this year 
showed more political division than was revealed by 
the vote for president, and they showed that in state 
politics the Federalist party was by no means com- 
pletely extinct. In the congressional elections the 
flood of Republicanism left only isolated islands of 
Federalism unsubmerged. In Massachusetts eight 
of the thirteen members professed this political faith ; 
New York returned some half-dozen men whose 
affiliations were with the same party ; from Pennsyl- 
vania came a somewhat larger number; and they 
numbered nearly half of the delegation of Maryland. 
The cities of New York and Philadelphia were repre- 
sented by Federalists, and there were three or four 
other districts, chiefly in New England, which ad- 
hered to the old party. There were also a few con- 
gressmen from the south who had been members of 



1 Benton, Thirty Years' View, I., 10. 

^ Niles' Register, XIX., 129; National Advocate, October 27, 
1820; Franklin Gazette, October 25, November 8, 1820 (elec- 
tion returns) ; Ames, State Docs, on Federal Relations, No. 5, p. 5. 



1830] PARTY POLITICS 175 

this organization. On the whole, however, the Fed- 
eralists awaited the new development of parties, 
determined to secure the best terms from those to 
whom they should transfer their allegiance. In 
New England, as has already been pointed out,* the 
toleration movement was completing its work of 
transferring power to democracy. 

More important than local issues or the death 
throes of federalism, was the democratic tendency 
revealed in the constitutional conventions of this 
period. Between 18 16 and 1830, ten states either 
established new constitutions or revised their old 
ones. In this the influence of the new west was 
peculiarly important. All of the new states which 
were formed in that region, after the War of 181 2, 
gave evidence in their constitutions of the demo- 
cratic spirit of the frontier. With the exception of 
Mississippi, where the voter was obliged either to be 
a tax-payer or a member of the militia, all the western 
states entered the Union with manhood suffrage, 
and all of them, in contrast with the south, from 
which their settlers had chiefly been drawn, pro- 
vided that apportionment of the legislature should 
be based upon the white population, thus accepting 
the doctrine of the rule of the majority rather than 
that of property. As the flood of population moved 
towards the west and offered these attractive exam- 
ples of democratic growth, the influence reacted on 
the older states. In her constitution of 18 18, Con- 

' See chap. it. above. 

VOL. XIV. — 1} 



176 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1818 

necticut gave the franchise to tax-payers or members 
of the militia, as did Massachusetts and New York 
in their constitutions of 1821. Maine provided in 
her constitution of 1820 for manhood suffrage, but 
by this time there was but slight difference between 
manhood suffrage and one based upon tax-paying. 

Webster in Massachusetts and Chancellor Kent in 
New York viewed with alarm the prospect that free- 
hold property should cease to be the foundation of 
government. Kent particularly warned the landed 
class that "one master capitalist with his one hun- 
dred apprentices, and journeymen, and agents, and 
dependents, will bear down at the polls an equal 
number of farmers of small estates in his vicinity, 
who cannot safely unite for their common defence." * 
It was the new counties of New York, particularly 
those of the western and northeastern frontier, which 
were the stronghold of the reform movement in that 
state. The abolition of the council of appointments 
and the council of revision by the New York con- 
vention contributed to the transfer of power to the 
people. But under the leadership of Van Buren a 
group of politicians, dubbed " The Albany Regency," 
controlled the political machinery as effectively as 
before.^ 

The campaign for the presidency of 1824 may be 

' Carter and Stone, Reports of tJte Proceedings and Debates of 
the Convention of 1S21, 222. 

» McMaster, UnitedSiates, V., 373-432 ; ibid.. Rights of Alan, 61; 
MacDonald, Jacksonian Democracy {Am. Nation, XV.), chap. iv. 



i82i] PARTY POLITICS 177 

said to have begun as early as 181 6.* Adams ob- 
served in 1 818 that the government was assuming 
daily the character of cabal, "and preparation, not 
for the next Presidential election, but for the one 
after"; ^ and by 1820, when the political sea ap- 
peared so placid, and parties had apparently dis- 
solved, bitter factional fights between the friends of 
the rival candidates constituted the really significant 
indications of American politics. From the details 
of the personal struggles (usually less important to 
the student of party history) one must learn the 
tendency towards the reappearance of parties in this 
period, when idealists believed that all factions had 
been fused into one triumphant organization. In 
all of the great sections, candidates appeared, anx- 
ious to consolidate the support of their own section 
and to win a following in the nation. It is time that 
we should survey these men, for the personal traits 
of the aspirants for the presidency had a larger in- 
fluence than ever before or since in the history of the 
coimtry. Moreover, we are able to see in these can- 
didates the significant features of the sections from 
which they came. 

New England was reluctantly and slowly coming 
to the conclusion that John Quincy Adams was the 
only available northern candidate. Adams did not 
fully represent the characteristics of his section, for 
he neither sprang from the democracy of the interior 
of New England nor did he remain loyal to the Fed- 

* Adams, Memoirs, V., 89. ^ Ibid., IV., 193. 



178 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [181 7 

eralist ideas that controlled the commercial interests 
of the coast. Moreover, of all the statesmen whom 
the nation produced, he had had the largest oppor- 
tunity to make a comparative study of government. 
As an eleven-year-old boy, he went with his father 
to Paris in 1778, and from then until 181 7, when he 
became Monroe's secretary of state, nearly half his 
time was spent at European courts. He served in 
France, Holland, Sweden, Russia, Prussia, and Eng- 
land, and had been senator of the United States 
from Massachusetts. 

Thus Adams entered on the middle period of his 
career, a man of learning and broad culture, rich in 
experience of national affairs, familiar with the cen- 
tres of Old -World civilization and with methods of 
European administration. He had touched life too 
broadly, in too many countries, to be provincial in 
his policy. In the minds of a large and influen- 
tial body of his fellow-citizens, the Federalists, he 
was an apostate, for in the days of the embargo he 
had warned Jefferson of the temper of his section, 
had resigned, and had been read out of the party. 
The unpopularity, as well as the fame, of his father, 
was the heritage of the son. Perhaps the most 
decisive indication of the weakening of sectional bias 
by his foreign training is afforded by his diplomatic 
policy. An expansionist by nature, he had been 
confirmed in the faith by his training in foreign 
courts. " If we are not taken for Romans we shall 
be taken for Jews," he exclaimed to one who ques- 



i82i] PARTY POLITICS 179 

tioned the wisdom of the bold utterances of his 
diplomatic correspondence. 

In one important respect Adams was the personifi- 
cation of his section. He was a Puritan, and his 
whole career was deeply affected by the fact. A 
man of method and regularity, tireless in his work 
(for he rose before the dawn and worked till mid- 
night), he never had a childhood and never tried to 
achieve self - forgetfulness. His diary, printed in 
twelve volumes, is a unique document for the study 
of the Puritan in politics. Not that it was an en- 
tirely unreserved expression of his soul, for he wrote 
with a consciousness that posterity would read the 
record, and its pages are a compound of apparently 
spontaneous revelation of his inmost thought and of 
silence upon subjects of which we would gladly know 
more. He had the Puritan's restraint, self-scrutiny, 
and self-condemnation. " I am," he writes, "a man 
of reserved, cold, austere, and forbidding manners." 
Nor can this estimate be pronounced unjust. He 
was a lonely man, communing with his soul in his 
diary more than with a circle of admiring friends. 
It was not easy for men to love John Quincy Ad- 
ams. The world may respect the man who regu- 
lates his course by a daily dead-reckoning, but it 
finds it easier to make friends with him who stum- 
bles towards rectitude by the momentum of his 
own nature. Popularity, in any deep sense, was 
denied him. This deprivation he repaid by harsh, 
vindictive, and censorious judgments upon his con- 



i8o RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1817 

temporaries, and by indifference to popular preju- 
dices. 

With the less lovely qualities of the Puritan 
aggravated by his own critical nature, Adams found 
himself in a struggle for the presidency against some 
of the most engaging personalities in American his- 
tory. He must win over his enemies in New Eng- 
land and attach that section to his fortunes ; he must 
find friends in the middle states, conciliate the 
south, and procure a following in the west, where 
Clay, the Hotspur of debate, with all the power of 
the speakership behind him, and Jackson, "Old 
Hickory," the hero of New Orleans, contested the 
field. And all the time he must satisfy his con- 
science, and reach his goal by the craft and strength 
of his intellect rather than by the arts of popular 
management. No statesman ever handled the prob- 
lems of his public career with a keener understand- 
ing of the conditions of success. 

The middle region was too much divided by the 
game of politics played by her multitude of minor 
leaders to unite upon a favorite son in this cam- 
paign; but De Witt Clinton, finding elements of 
strength in the prestige which his successful advo- 
cacy of the Erie Canal had brought to him through- 
out the region where internal improvements were 
popular, and relying upon his old connections with 
the Federalists, watched events with eager eye, 
waiting for an opportunity which never came. 
Although the south saw in Rufus King's advocacy 



i824] PARTY POLITICS i8i 

of the exclusion of slavery from Missouri a deep 
design to win the presidency by an antislavery 
combination of the northern states, there was little 
ground for this belief. In truth, the middle region 
was merely the fighting-ground for leaders in the 
other sections. 

In the south, Calhoun and Crawford were already 
contending for the mastery. Each of them repre- 
sented fundamental tendencies in the section. Bom 
in Virginia in 1772, Crawford had migrated with his 
father in early childhood to South Carolina, and soon 
after to Georgia.* Here he became the leader of 
the Virginia element against the interior democracy. 
But in his coarse strength and adaptability the 
burly Georgian showed the impress which frontier 
influences had given to his state. His career in 
national politics brought him strange alliances. This 
Georgia candidate had been no mere subject of the 
Virginia dynasty, for he supported John Adams in 
his resistance to France in 1798; challenged the 
administration of Jefferson by voting with the Fed- 
eralists in the United States Senate against the 
embargo; and ridiculed the ambiguous message of 
Madison when the issue of peace or war with Great 
Britain was under consideration. A fearless sup- 
porter of the recharter of the national bank, he 

* Phillips, "Georgia and State Rights," in Am. Hist. Assoc, 
Report 1901, II., 95; Cobb, Leisure Labors; Miller, Bench and 
Bar of Georgia; West, "Life and Times of William H. Craw- 
ford," in NaHonal Portrait Gallery, IV.; Adams, Life of Gallatin. 
598. 



i82 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1816 

had championed the doctrine of implied powers and 
denied the right of a state to resist the laws of Con- 
gress except by changing its representation or ap- 
pealing to the sword under the right of revolution. 

Nevertheless, in the period of this volume, Craw- 
ford joined the ranks of the southerners who de- 
manded a return to strict construction and insist- 
ence on state rights. In the congressional caucus 
of 1 81 6, he obtained 54 votes for the presi- 
dency against 65 for Monroe. Had not the influ- 
ence of Madison been thrown for the latter, it seems 
probable that Crawford would have obtained the 
nomination; but his strength in building up a fol- 
lowing in Congress was much greater than his popu- 
larity with the people at large. Controlling the 
patronage of the treasury department, he enlarged 
his political influence. As the author of the four- 
years '-tenure -of -office act, in 1820, he has been 
vehemently criticised as a founder of the spoils sys- 
tem. But there are reasons for thinking that Craw- 
ford's advocacy of this measure was based upon 
considerations of efficiency at least as much as those 
of politics,^ and the conduct of his department was 
marked by sagacity. The administration of such a 
man would probably have been characterized by an 
accommodating spirit which would have carried on 
the traditions of Monroe. 

In the career of Calhoun are strikingly exhibited 
the changing characteristics of the south in this era. 

' Fish, Civil Service and Patronage, 66 et seq. 



1824] PARTY POLITICS 183 

His grandfather was a Scotch-Irishman who came 
to Pennsylvania with the emigration of that people 
in the first half of the eighteenth century, and thence 
followed the stream of settlement that passed up the 
Great Valley and into South Carolina to the frontier, 
from which men like Daniel Boone crossed the moun- 
tains to the conquest of Kentucky and Tennessee.* 
The Calhoun family were frontier Indian fighters, 
but, instead of crossing the mountains as did An- 
drew Jackson, Calhoun remained to grow up with 
his section and to share its changes from a commu- 
nity essentially western to a cotton-planting and 
slave-holding region. This is the clew to his career. 

In his speech in the House of Representatives in 
1817, on internal improvements, Calhoun warned 
his colleagues against "a low, sordid, selfish, and 
sectional spirit," and declared that "in a country so 
extensive, and so various in its interests, what is 
necessary for the common good, may apparently be 
opposed to the interests of particular sections. It 
must be submitted to as the condition of our great- 
ness." ' This was the voice of the nationalistic 
west, as well as that of South Carolina in Calhoun's 
young manhood. 

In view of his later career, it is significant that 
many of those who described him in these youth- 
ful years of his nationalistic policy found in him 

* Cf . Howard, Preliminaries of the Revolution (Atn. Nation, 
VIII.), chap. xiii. 

'Annals of Cong., 14 Cong., 2 Sess., 854, 855. 



i84 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1823 

a noticeable tendency to rash speculation and 
novelty. "As a politician," said Senator Mills, of 
Massachusetts, about 1823, he is "too theorizing, 
speculative, and metaphysical, — magnificent in his 
views of the powers and capacities of the govern- 
ment, and of the virtue, intelligence, and wisdom of 
the people. He is in favor of elevating, cherishing, 
and increasing all the institutions of the government, 
and of a vigorous and energetic administration of 
it. From his rapidity of thought, he is often wrong 
in his conclusions, and his theories are sometimes 
wild, extravagant, and impractical. He has always 
claimed to be, and is, of the Democratic party, but 
of a very different class from that of Crawford ; more 
like Adams, and his schemes are sometimes de- 
nounced by his party as ultra -fanatical. " * 

Another contemporary, writing prior to 1824^ 
declared: "He wants, I think, consistency and per- 
severance of mind, and seems incapable of long- 
continued and patient investigation. What he does 
not see at the first examination, he seldom takes 
pains to search for ; but still the lightning glance of 
his mind, and the rapidity with which he analyzes, 
never fail to furnish him with all that may be nec- 
essary for his immediate purposes. In his legisla- 
tive career, which, though short, was uncommonly 
luminous, his love of novelty, and his apparent 
solicitude to astonish were so great, that he has 
occasionally been known to go beyond even the 

' Mass. Hist. Soc, Proceedings, XIX., 37 (1881-1882). 



•1824] PARTY POLITICS 185 

dreams of political visionaries, and to propose 
schemes which were in their nature impracticable 
or injurious, and which he seemed to offer merely 
for the purpose of displaying the affluence of his 
mind, and the fertility of his ingenuity." * "Cal- 
houn," said William Wirt, in 1824, "advised me the 
other day to study less and trust more to genius; 
and I believe the advice is sound. He has certainly 
practised on his own precepts, and has become, 
justly, a distinguished man. It may do very well 
in politics, where a proposition has only to be com- 
pared with general principles with which the poli- 
tician is familiar." ^ 

At the beginning of the campaign, Calhoun was 
the confidant and friend of Adams, apparently con- 
sidering the alternative of throwing his influence in 
the latter 's favor, if it proved impossible to realize 
his own aspirations. 

From beyond the Alleghanies came two candi- 
dates who personified the forces of their section. 
We can see the very essence of the west in Henry 
Clay and Andrew Jackson. Clay was a Kentuckian, 
with the characteristics of his state ; but, in a larger 
sense, he represented the stream of migration which 
had occupied the Ohio Valley during the preceding 
half-century. This society was one which, in its 

* Quoted by Hodgson, Letters from North Am., I., 81. 

* Kennedy, William Wirt, II., 143; other views of Calhoun in 
MacDonald, Jacksonian Democracy, chaps, v., ix.; 'Ra.rt, Slavery 
and Abolition, chap. xix. ; Garrison, Westward Extension {Am. 
Nation, XV., XVI., XVII.). 



i86 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [i8iJ 

composition, embraced elements of the middle re- 
gion as well as of the south. It tended towards free- 
dom, but had slaves in its midst, and had been 
accustomed, through experience, to adjust relations 
between slavery and free labor by a system of com- 
promise. Economically, it was in need of internal 
improvements and the development of manufactures 
to afford a home market. It had the ideal of Amer- 
ican expansion, and in earlier days vehemently 
demanded the control of the Mississippi and the 
expulsion of the Spaniard from the coasts of the 
Gulf. In the War of 1812 it sent its sons to destroy 
English influence about the Great Lakes and had 
been ambitious to conquer Canada. 

It is an evidence of the rapidity with which the 
west stamped itself upon its colonists, that although 
Clay was born, and bred to the law, in Virginia, he 
soon became the mouth-piece of these western forces. 
In his personality, also, he reflected many of the 
traits of this region. Kentucky, ardent in its spirit, 
not ashamed of a strain of sporting blood, fond of 
the horse-race, partial to its whiskey, ready to 
"bluff" in politics as in poker, but sensitive to 
honor, was the true home of Henry Clay. To a 
Puritan like John Quincy Adams, Clay was, "in 
politics, as in private life, essentially a gamester." • 
But if the Puritan mind did not approve of Henry 
Clay, multitudes of his fellow-countrymen in other 
sections did. There was a charm about him that 

* Adams, Memoirs, V., 59. 



18241 PARTY POLITICS 187 

fastened men to him. He was " Harry of the West," 
an impetuous, wilful, high-spirited, daring, jealous, 
but, withal, a lovable man. He had the qualities of 
leadership; was ambitious, impulsive, often guided 
by his intuitions and his sensibilities, but, at the 
same time, an adroit and bold champion of con- 
structive legislation. He knew, too, the time for 
compromise and for concession. Perhaps he knew 
it too well; for, although no statesman of this era 
possessed more courageous initiative and construct- 
ive power, his tact and his powers of management 
were such that his place in history is quite as much 
that of the "great compromiser" as it is that of the 
author of the "American system," 

It is not too much to say that Clay made the 
speakership one of the important American institu- 
tions. He was the master of the House of Repre- 
sentatives, shaping its measures by the appointment 
of his committees and his parliamentary manage- 
ment.* By the period of our survey, with the pow- 
er of this office behind him. Clay had fashioned a 
set of American political issues reflective of western 
and middle-state ideas, and had made himself a 
formidable rival in the presidential struggle. He 
had caught the self-confidence, the continental aspi- 
rations, the dash and impetuosity of the west. But 
he was also, as a writer of the time declared, "able 
to captivate high and low, / 'honime dit salon and the 
'squatter' in the Western wilderness." He was a 

* Follett, Speaker of the House, §§ 41-46. 



i88 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1767 

mediator between east and west, between north 
and south — the "great conciliator." ^ 

If Henry Clay was one of the favorites of the west, 
Andrew Jackson was the west itself. While Clay 
was able to voice, with statesman-like ability, the 
demand for economic legislation to promote her 
interests, and while he exercised an extraordinary 
fascination by his personal magnetism and his elo- 
quence, he never became the hero of the great masses 
of the west ; he appealed rather to the more intel- 
ligent — to the men of business and of property. 
Andrew Jackson was the very personification of the 
contentious, nationalistic democracy of the interior. 
He was born, in 1767, of Scotch-Irish parents, who 
had settled near the boundary-line between North 
and South Carolina, not far from the similar settle- 
ments from which, within a few years of Jackson's 
birth, Daniel Boone and Robertson went forth to be 
the founders of Kentucky and Tennessee. In 1788, 
with a caravan of emigrants, Jackson crossed the 
Alleghanies to Nashville, Tennessee, then an out- 
post of settlement still exposed to the incursions of 
Indians. During the first seven or eight years of 
his residence he was public prosecutor — an office 
that called for nerve and decision, rather than legal 
acumen, in that turbulent country. 



' Grund, Aristocracy in America, II., 213. For other views of 
Clay.cf. Babcock, Am. Nationality, chap, xii.; MacDonald, Jack- 
sonian Democracy, chap. xi. ; Garrison, Westward Extension, chap, 
iii. (.4m. Nation, XIII., XV., XVII.). 



1796J PARTY POLITICS 1S9 

The appearance of this frontiersman on the floor 
of Congress was an omen full of significance. He 
reached Philadelphia at the close of Washington's 
administration, having ridden on horseback nearly 
eight hundred miles to his destination. Gallatin 
(himself a western Pennsylvanian) afterwards graph- 
ically described Jackson, as he entered the halls of 
Congress, as "a tall, lank, uncouth-looking person- 
age, with long locks of hair hanging over his face, 
and a cue down his back tied in an eel-skin; his 
dress singular, his manners and deportment those 
of a rough backwoodsman."* Jefferson afterwards 
testified to Webster: "His passions are terrible. 
When I was President of the Senate, he was a 
Senator, and he could never speak, on account of 
the rashness of his feelings. I have seen him at- 
tempt it repeatedly, and as often choke with rage."^ 
At length the frontier, in the person of its leader, 
had found a place in the government. This six-foot 
backwoodsman, angular, lantern- jawed, and thin, 
with blue eyes that blazed on occasion ; this choleric, 
impetuous, Scotch-Irish leader of men; this expert 
duellist and ready fighter; this embodiment of the 
contentious, vehement, personal west, was in politics 
to stay.^ 

In the War of 181 2, by the defeat of the Indians 

' Hildreth, United States, iv., 692. 

* Webster, Writings (National ed.), XVII., 371. 

' For other appreciations, see Babcock, Am. Nattonality, 
chap, xvii.; MacDonald, Jacksonian Democracy, chaps, ii., xviii. 
{Am. Nation, XIII., XV.). 



I90 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1812 

of the Gulf plains, he made himself the conqueror of 
a new province for western settlement, and when he 
led his frontier riflemen to the victory of New Or- 
leans he became the national hero, the self-made 
man, the incarnation of the popular ideal of democ- 
racy. 

The very rashness and arbitrariness which his 
Seminole campaign displayed appealed to the west, 
for he went to his object with the relentless direct- 
ness of a frontiersman. This episode gave to Adams 
the opportunity to write his masterly state paper 
defending the actions of the general. But Henry 
Clay, seeing, perhaps, in the rising star of the fron- 
tier military hero a baneful omen to his own career, 
and hoping to break the administration forces by 
holding the government responsible for Jackson's 
actions, led an assault upon him in the Seminole 
debates on the floor of the House of Representa- 
tives.^ Leaving Tennessee when he heard of the 
attack which was meditated against him, the general 
rushed (181 9) to this new field of battle, and had 
the satisfaction of winning what he regarded as " the 
greatest victory he ever obtained" — a triumph on 
every count of Clay's indictment. This contest 
Jackson considered " the Touchstone of the election 
of the next president." ^ From this time the per- 
sonality of the "Old Hero" was as weighty a factor 

1 Babcock, Am. Nationality (Am. Nation, XIII.), chap. xvii. 
* N. Y. Publ. Library, Bulletin, IV., 160, 161; Parton, Jack' 
son, II., chap. xl. 



1824] PARTY POLITICS 191 

in American politics as the tariff or internal im- 
provements. 

He had now outgrown the uncouthness of his 
earlier days and had become stately and dignified 
in his manner. Around this unique personality there 
began to gather all those democratic forces which we 
have noted as characteristic of the interior of the 
country, reinforced by the democracy of the cities, 
growing into self-consciousness and power. A new 
force was coming into American life. This fiery 
Tennesseean was becoming the political idol of a 
popular movement which swept across all sections, 
with but slight regard to their separate economic 
interests. The rude, strong, turbulent democracy 
of the west and of the country found in him its 
natural leader. 

All these candidates and the dominant element in 
every section professed the doctrines of republican- 
ism ; but what were the orthodox tenets of republi- 
canism at the end of the rule of the Virginia dynasty ? 
To this question different candidates and different 
sections gave conflicting answers. Out of their dif- 
ferences there was already the beginning of a new 
division of parties. 

The progress of events gave ample opportunity 
for collision between the various factions. The 
crisis of 181 9 and the depression of the succeeding 
years worked, on the whole, in the interests of Jack- 
son, inclining the common people to demand a leader 
and a new dispensation. Not, perhaps, without a 

VOL. XtV. — 1< 



192 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1819 

malicious joy did John Quincy Adams write in his di- 
ary at that time that " Crawford has labors and perils 
enough before him in the management of the finances 
for the three succeeding years." ^ From the nego- 
tiation of the Florida treaty in 1819, and especially 
from the relinquishment by Spain of her claims to 
the Pacific coast north of the forty-second parallel, 
the secretary of state expected to reap a harvest of 
political advantage.^ But Clay, as well as Benton 
and the west in general, balked his hopes by de- 
nouncing the treaty as an abandonment of American 
rights; and, although Adams won friends in the 
south by the acquisition of Florida, Spain's delay of 
two years in the ratification of the treaty so far 
neutralized the credit that the treaty was, after all, 
but a feast of Tantalus. In these intervening years, 
when the United States was several times on the 
verge of forcibly occupying Florida, the possibility 
of a war with Spain, into which European powers 
might be drawn, increased the importance of Gen- 
eral Jackson as a figure in the eyes of the public. 

Next the Missouri controversy, like "a flaming 
sword," ^ cut in every direction and affected the 
future of all the presidential candidates. The hope 
of Crawford to reap the reward of his renunciation 
in 1 81 6 was based, not only upon his moderation in 
his earlier career, which had brought him friends 

' Adams, Memoirs, IV., 391. 

^ Ibid., IV., 238, 273, 451, v., 53, 109, 290; Monroe, Writings, 
VI., 127. 'Adams, Memoirs, V., 91. 



i82o] PARTY POLITICS 193 

among the Federalists, but also upon the prospect 
of attracting a following in Pennsylvania, with 
the aid of the influence of Gallatin, and in New 
York as the regular candidate of the party. These 
hopes of northern support demanded that Crawford 
should trim his sails with care, attacking the policies 
of his rivals rather than framing issues of his own. 
But for a time the Missouri controversy alienated 
both Pennsylvania and New York from the south, 
and it brought about a bitterness of feeling fatal to 
his success in those two states. To Clay, too, the 
slavery struggle brought embarrassments, for his 
attitude as a compromiser failed to strengthen him 
in the south, while it diminished his following in 
the north. Calhoun suffered from the same diffi- 
culty, although his position in the cabinet enabled 
him to keep in the background in this heated con- 
test. Jackson stood in a different situation. At 
the time he was remote from the controversy, hav- 
ing his own troubles as governor of Florida, and, as 
a slave-holding planter he was not suspected by the 
south, while at the same time his popularity as the 
representative of the new democracy was stead- 
ily winning him friends in the antislavery state of 
Pennsylvania. 

To Adams all the agitation was a distinct gain, 
since it broke the concert between Virginia and New 
York and increased his chances as the only impor- 
tant northern candidate. He saw — none more clear- 
ly — the possibility of this issue as a basis for a new 



194 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1821 

party organization,' but he saw also that it men- 
aced a dissolution of the Union. ^ He was not dis- 
posed to alienate the south, and he contented him- 
self with confiding his denunciation of slavery to the 
secret pages of his diary, while publicly he took his 
stand on the doctrine that the proposed restriction 
upon Missouri was against the Constitution.^ As 
early as 1821 he recognized that the number of 
candidates in the field made it almost certain that 
the election would be decided by the vote of states 
in the House of Representatives, where the vote of 
the single member from Illinois would count as much 
as that of the whole delegation of New York or Penn- 
sylvania. What Adams needed, therefore, was to 
combine New England in his support, obtain, if pos- 
sible, a majority in New York, and add the votes of 
a sufficient number of smaller states to win the 
election. 

The seventeenth Congress, which met in Decem- 
ber, 1 82 1, and lasted until the spring of 1823, was 
one of the most ineffective legislative bodies in the 
country's history. Henry Clay had returned to 
Kentucky to resume the practice of the law as a 
means of restoring his financial fortunes, and the 
importance of his leadership was emphasized by his 
absence. Without mastery, and in the absence of 
party discipline. Congress degenerated into a mere 
arena for the conflicts of rival personal factions, each 

* Adams, Memoirs, IV., 529. ' Ibid.,Y., 12, 13, 53. 

'^Ibid., IV., 529. 



i82i] PARTY POLITICS 195 

anxious to destroy the reputation of the candidate 
favored by the other. 

In December, 1821, Barbour, of Virginia, was 
chosen speaker, by a close vote, over Taylor, the 
favorite of Adams, thus transferring the control of 
the congressional committees again to the south, 
aided by its New York allies. The advantage to 
Crawford arising from this election was partly neu- 
tralized by the fact that in this year his partisans in 
Georgia were defeated by the choice of his bitterest 
enemy for the governorship. It may have been this 
circumstance which aroused the hope of Crawford's 
southern rivals and led to the calling of a legislative 
caucus in South Carolina, which, on December 18, 
1 82 1, by a close vote, nominated William Lowndes 
instead of Calhoun for the presidency. Many of 
Calhoun's partisans refused to attend this caucus, 
and the vote was a close one (57 to 53).* Lowndes 
was a wealthy South Carolina planter, judicious and 
dispassionate, with a reputation for fair-mindedness 
and wisdom that gained him the respect of his foes 
as well as his friends. According to tradition, Clay 
once declared that among the many men he had 
known he found it difficult to decide who was the 
greatest, but added, "I think the wisest man I ever 
knew was William Lowndes." ^ His death, in less 
than a year, removed from the presidential contest 

• Ravenel, William Lowndes, chap, x.; Adams, Memoirs, V., 
468, 470; National Intelligencer, January 19, 1822. 
^ Ravenel, William Lowndes, 238. 



196 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1821 

an important figure, and from the south one of the 
most gifted of her sons. 

As soon as the news of the nomination of Lowndes 
reached Washington, a delegation of members of 
Congress, from various sections, secured Calhoun's 
consent to avow his candidacy. His career as a 
tarifE man and as a friend of internal improvements 
had won him northern supporters, especially in 
Pennsylvania, although, as South Carolina's action 
showed, he was not able to control his state. The 
announcement of Calhoun's candidacy turned against 
him all the batteries of his rivals. Pleading the 
depleted condition of the treasury, Crawford's parti- 
sans in Congress attacked the measures of Calhoun 
as secretary of war. Retrenchment in the expendi- 
tures for the army was demanded, and finally, under 
the leadership of Crawford's friends, the Senate 
refused to ratify certain nominations of military 
officers made by the president on the recommenda- 
tion of the secretary of war, giving as a reason that 
they were not in accordance with the law for the 
reduction of the army. In the cabinet discussion, 
Crawford openly supported this opposition, and his 
relations with the president became so strained that, 
in the spring of 1822, reports were rife that his 
resignation would be demanded.^ Crawford himself 
wrote to Gallatin that it would not be to his disad- 
vantage to be removed from office.^ 

* Cf. Adams, Memoirs, V., 525. 
' Gallatin, Writings, II., 241. 



1822] PARTY POLITICS 197 

In the summer the matter was brought to a 
head by a correspondence in which Monroe indig- 
nantly intimated that Crawford had given counte- 
nance to the allegation that the president's principles 
and policy were not in sympathy with the early 
Jeffersonian system of economy and state rights. 
Believing that Crawford was aiming at the creation 
of a new party (a thing which distressed Monroe, 
who regarded parties as an evil),' he made it clear 
that it was the duty of a cabinet officer, when once 
the policy of the executive had been determined, to 
give that policy co-operation and support.^ In his 
reply Crawford denied that he had personally an- 
tagonized the measures of the administration ; ^ but 
he took the ground that a cabinet officer should 
not attempt to influence his friends in Congress 
either for or against the policy of the govern- 
ment. 

His assurances of loyalty satisfied Monroe and 
averted the breach. It is easy to see, however, that 
Crawford's attitude strengthened the feeling on the 
part of his rivals that he was intriguing against the 
administration. They believed, whether he insti- 
gated his partisans to oppose measures favored by 
the president or was unable to restrain them, in 
either case he should be forced into open opposi- 

* Monroe, Writings, VI., 286-291. 

' Monroe to Crawford, August 22, 1822, MS. in N. Y. Pub. Li- 
brary. 

' Crawford to Monroe, September 3, 1822, MS. in N. Y. Pub. 
Library; cf. Adams, Memoirs, VL, 390. 



198 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1822 

tion.* The truth is that the government was so 
divided within itself that it was difficult to determine 
with certainty what its policy was. Monroe's great- 
est weakness was revealed at this time in his inability 
to create and insist upon a definite policy. The situ- 
ation was aggravated by the president's determina- 
tion to remain neutral between the rival members of 
his official family, and by the loss of influence which 
he suffered through the knowledge that he was soon 
to lay down the presidential power. 

Meanwhile, John Quincy Adams watched these 
intrigues with bitterness of soul. Debarred by his 
Puritan principles from the open solicitation of votes 
which his rivals practised, he yet knew every move 
in the game and gauged the political tendencies with 
the astuteness of the politician, albeit a Puritan poli- 
tician. Nor did he disdain to make such use of his 
position as would win friends or remove enemies. 
He proposed to Calhoun a foreign mission, suggest- 
ed the same to Clay, favored an ambassadorship for 
Clinton, and urged the appointment of Jackson to 
Mexico. These overtures were politely declined by 
the candidates, and Adams was forced to fight for 
the presidency against the men whom he would so 
gladly have sent to honor their country abroad. 

' Cf. Poinsett to Monroe, May 10, 1822, Monroe MSS., in Li- 
brary of Cong.; Adams, Memoirs, V., 315, VI., 57. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE MONROE DOCTRINE 
(1821-1823) 

THE place of slavery in the westward expansion 
of the nation was not the only burning ques- 
tion which the American people had to face in the 
presidency of Monroe. Within a few years after 
that contest, the problem of the independence of the 
New World and of the destiny of the United States 
in the sisterhood of new American republics con- 
fronted the administration. Should the political 
rivalries and wars of Europe to acquire territory be 
excluded from the western hemisphere? Should 
the acquisition of new colonies by European states 
in the vast unsettled spaces of the two Americas 
be terminated? These weighty questions were put 
to the mild Virginian statesman ; history has named 
his answer the Monroe Doctrine. 

From the beginning of our national existence, the 
United States had been pushing back Europe from 
her borders, and asserting neutrality and the right 
to remain outside of the political system of the Old 
World. Washington's farewell address of 1 796, with 
its appeal to his fellow-citizens against "interweav- 



200 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1790 

ing our destiny with that of any part of Europe," 
sank deep into the popular consciousness. It did 
not interfere with the process by which, piece by 
piece, the United States added to its domains frag- 
ments from the disintegrating Spanish empire; for 
so long as European states held the strategic posi- 
tions on our flanks, as they did in Washington's day, 
the policy of separation from the nations of the Old 
World was one difficult to maintain ; and France and 
England watched the enlargement of the United 
States with jealous eye. Each nation, in turn, con- 
sidered the plans of Miranda, a Venezuelan revo- 
lutionist, for the freeing of Spanish America. In 
1790 the Nootka Sound affair threatened to place 
England in possession of the whole Mississippi val- 
ley and to give her the leadership in Spanish Amer- 
ica,^ Two years later, France urged England to join 
her in freeing the colonies of Spain in the New 
World ; ^ and when Pitt rejected these overtures, 
France sent Genet to spread the fires of her revolu- 
tion in Louisiana and Florida.^ 

When this design failed, France turned to diplo- 
macy, and between 1795 and 1800 tried to persuade 
Spain to relinquish Florida and Louisiana to her- 
self, as a means of checking the expansion of the 
United States and of rendering her subservient to 

» Turner, in Am. Hist. Rev., VII., 704, VIII., 78; Manning, 
Nootka Sound Controversy, in Am. Hist. Assoc, Report, 1904, p. 
281; cf. Bassett, Federalist System {Am. Nation, XL), chap. vi. 

*Sorel, UEurope et la Revolution Frangaise, II., 384, 418, 
III., 17. ^Turner, in Am. Hist. Rev., III., 650, X. 259. 



i8i8] MONROE DOCTRINE 201 

France. The growing preponderance of France over 
Spain, and the fear that she would secure control of 
Spanish America, led England again in 1798 to listen 
to Miranda's dream of freeing his countrymen, and 
to sound the United States on a plan for joint action 
against Spain in the New World. ^ The elder Adams 
turned a deaf ear to these suggestions, and when at 
last Napoleon achieved the possession of Louisiana, 
it was only to turn it over to the United States.^ 
Jefferson's threat that the possession of Louisiana 
by France would seal the union between England 
and the United States and "make the first cannon 
which shall be fired in Europe the signal for the tear- 
ing up of any settlement she may have made, and 
for holding the two continents of America in seques- 
tration for the common purposes of the united 
British and American nations," ^ showed how un- 
stable must be the American policy of isolation so 
long as Europe had a lodgment on our borders."* 

The acquisition of Louisiana by the United States 
was followed by the annexation of West Flor- 
ida; and the Seminole campaign frightened Spain 
into the abandonment of East Florida.^ While the 
United States was thus crowding Europe back from 

' Turner, in Am. Hist. Rev., X., 249 et seq., 276. 

^ Sloane, in Am. Hist. Rev., IV., 439. 

^ JefTerson, Writings (Ford's ed.), VIII., 145. 

* Cf. Channing, Jeffersonian System {Am. Nation, XII.), 
chap. V. 

* Babcock, American Nationality {Am. Nation, XIII.), chap, 
xvii. 



202 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1807 

its borders and strengthening its leadership in the 
New World, Spanish America was revolting from the 
mother-country. When Napoleon made himself mas- 
ter of Spain in 1807, English merchants, alarmed 
at the prospect of losing the lucrative trade which 
they had built up in the lands which Spain had so 
long monopolized, supported the revolutionists with 
money, while various expeditions led by English 
officers aided the revolt.^ At first, failure met the 
efforts of the loosely compacted provinces, made 
up of sharply marked social classes, separated by 
race antagonisms, and untrained in self-government. 
Only in Buenos Ayres (later the Argentine Confed- 
eration), where representatives of the United Prov- 
inces of the Rio de la Plata declared their indepen- 
dence in 1 81 6, were the colonists able to hold their 
ground. 

A new era in the revolt began, however, in 181 7, 
when General San Martin surprised the Spaniards 
by his march, from a frontier province of La Plata, 
over a pass thirteen thousand feet above the sea 
across the Andes to Chili. In the course of four 
years, with the co-operation of Lord Cochrane (who 
relinquished the British service in order to command 
the fleet of the insurgents on the Pacific), he effected 
the liberation of Chili and of Peru. Meanwhile, in 
the northern provinces the other great South Amer- 
ican revolutionist, Bolivar, aided by a legion of 

' Paxson, Independence of the So. Am. Republics, chap, iii.; 
Am. Hist. Rev., IV., 449, VI., 508. 



i822] MONROE DOCTRINE 203 

Irish and English veterans, won the independence 
of Venezuela and Colombia. In July, 1822, these 
two successful generals met in Ecuador; and San 
Martin, yielding the leadership to the more ambi- 
tious Bolivar, withdrew from the New World. By 
this date, America was clearly lost to the Latin 
states of Europe, for Mexico became an independent 
empire in 1821, and the next year Brazil, while it 
chose for its ruler a prince of the younger line of the 
royal house of Portugal, proclaimed its independence.* 
Although the relations between these revolution- 
ary states and England, both on the military and 
on the commercial side, were much closer than with 
the United States, this nation followed the course 
of events with keen interest. Agents were sent, in 
18 1 7 and 1820, to various South American states, to 
report upon the conditions there ; and the vessels of 
the revolutionary governments were accorded bel- 
ligerent rights, and admitted to the ports of the 
United States.^ The occupation of Amelia Island 
and Galveston, in 181 7, by revolutionists, claiming 
the protection of the flags of Colombia and Mexico 
respectively, gave opportunity for piratical forays 
upon commerce, which the United States was unable 
to tolerate, and these establishments were broken 
up by the government.^ 



' Paxson, Independence of the So. Am. Republics, chap. i. 
*Ibid., 121; Atn. State Paps., Foreign, IV., 217, 818. 
' McMaster, United States, IV., chap, xxxiv.; Reeves, in Johns 
Hopkins Univ. Studies, XXIII., Nos. 9, 10. 



204 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1817 

President Monroe seems to have been inclined to 
recognize the independence of these states on the 
earhest evidence of their abihty to sustain it; but 
the secretary of state, John Quincy Adams, favored 
a policy of delay. He had shght confidence in the 
turbulent, untrained republics of Latin- America, and 
little patience with the idea that their revolution had 
anything in common with that of the United States. 
At the close of 18 17 he believed it inexpedient and 
unjust for the United States to favor their cause, 
and he urged a friend to publish inquiries into the 
political morality and the right of the United States 
to take sides with a people who trampled upon civil 
rights, disgraced their revolution by buccaneering 
and piracy, and who lacked both unity of cause and 
of effort.^ His own system was based on the theory 
that the United States should move in harmony 
with England, and, if possible, with the other Euro- 
pean powers in the matter of recognition ; ^ and he 
perceived that Spain would be more likely to yield 
Florida to the United States if the president did not 
acknowledge the independence of her other prov- 
inces. 

Henry Clay now came forward as the advocate of 
immediate recognition of the revolutionary repub- 
lics. In this he was undoubtedly swayed by a real 
sympathy with the cause of freedom and by the 

• Letter to A. H. Everett, in Am. Hist. Rev., XL, 112. 
^ Paxson, Independence of the So. Am. Republics, 149 (citing 
MRS. in State Dept.) 



i8i8] MONROE DOCTRINE 205 

natural instincts of a man of the west, where antag- 
onism to Spain was bred in the bone. But his 
insistence upon immediate action was also stimu- 
lated by his opposition to Monroe and the secretary 
of state. Clay's great speech on recognition was 
made May 24 and 25, 18 18. His imagination kin- 
dled at the vastness of South America : " The loftiest 
mountains; the most majestic rivers in the world; 
the richest mines of the precious metals; and the 
choicest productions of the earth." "We behold 
there," said he, "a spectacle still more interesting 
and sublime — the glorious spectacle of eighteen mill- 
ions of people struggling to burst their chains and 
be free." He appealed to Congress to support an 
American system by recognizing these sister repub- 
lics, and argued that, both in diplomacy and in 
commerce they would be guided by an American 
policy and aid the United States to free itself from 
dependence on Europe. His motion was lost by an 
overwhelming majority, but the speech made a deep 
impression.^ 

In the two years which elapsed between the nego- 
tiation and the ratification of the Florida treaty, 
the president was several times on the point of 
recommending the forcible occupation of Florida, 
but he withheld the blow, hoping that the liberal 
Spanish government established under the constitu- 
tion of 1820 might be brought to give its consent to 
the cession. The impetuous Clay chafed under this 

• Annals of Cong., 15 Cong., i Sess., II., 1474. 



2o6 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

delay, and on May 10, 1820, he broke forth in 
another speech, in support of a resolution declaring 
the expediency of sending ministers to the South 
American states. Charging the administration, and 
especially John Quincy Adams, with subserviency 
to Great Britain, he demanded that the United 
States should become the centre of a system against 
the despotism of the Old World and should act on 
its own responsibility. " We look too much abroad," 
said he. " Let us break these commercial and politi- 
cal fetters; let us no longer watch the nod of any 
European politician; let us become real and true 
Americans, and place ourselves at the head of the 
American system." ' 

Clay was steadily gaining support in his efforts to 
force the hands of the administration : his resolu- 
tions won by a fair majority, and again, in February, 
1 82 1, he secured the almost unanimous assent of the 
House to a resolution of sympathy with South Amer- 
ica. Another resolution, expressing the readiness of 
that body to support the president whenever he 
should think it expedient to recognize the republics, 
passed by a vote of 86 to 68, and the triumphant 
Clay was placed at the head of a committee to wait 
on the president with this resolution.* 

Although the victory was without immediate effect 
on the administration, which refused to act while 

' Annals of Cong., 16 Cong., i Sess., II., 2727. 
^ Ibid., 2229, and 2 Sess., 1081, 1091; Adams, Memoirs, V., 
268. 



i822] MONROE DOCTRINE 207 

the Florida treaty was still unratified, Adams per- 
ceived that the popular current was growing too 
strong to be much longer stemmed; the charge of 
dependence upon England was one not easy to be 
borne, and Clay's vision of an independent Ameri- 
can system guided by the United States had its 
influence on his mind. Five months after Clay's 
speech, in 1820, extolling such a system, Adams set 
forth similar general ideas in a discussion between 
himself and the British minister over the regulation 
of the slave-trade/ By 1822, Florida was in our 
possession. The success of the arms of the revolu- 
tionists was unmistakable; several governments of 
sufficient stability to warrant recognition had been 
erected ; and it was patent to the world that Spain 
had lost her colonies. Acting on these considera- 
tions, Monroe sent a message to Congress, March 8, 
1822, announcing that the time for recognition had 
come, and asking for appropriations for ministers to 
South America.^ 

In the mean time, the secretary of state was con- 
fronted with important diplomatic questions which 
complicated the South American problem. As 
Spanish America broke away from the mother-coun- 
try, its possessions in North America on the Pacific 
were exposed to seizure by the rival powers. In 
182 1, when Stratford Canning, the British minister 
to the United States, protested against a motion, 

• Adams, Memoirs, V., 182. 

* Richardson, Messages and Papers, II., 116 

VOL XIV. — If 



2o8 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1821 

in the Honse of Representatives, that the United 
States should form an estabhshment on the Colum- 
bia, Adams challenged any claim of England to the 
shores of the Pacific. "I do not know,'' said he, 
"what you claim nor what you do not claim. You 
claim India ; you claim Africa ; you claim — " 
"Perhaps," said Canning, "a piece of the moon," 
"No," said Adams, "I have not heard that you 
claim exclusively any part of the moon; but there 
is not a spot on this habitable globe that I could 
affirm you do not claim; and there is none which 
you may not claim with as much color of right as 
you can have to Columbia River or its mouth." * 

The time had arrived when Adams's familiarity 
with foreign diplomacy, his belief that a new nation 
must assert its rights with vigor if it expected to 
maintain them, his very testiness and irascibility, 
his "bull-dog fighting qualities " — in short, the char- 
acteristics that were sources of weakness to him in 
domestic politics — proved to be elements of strength 
in his conduct of foreign relations. The individual- 
ism, the uncompromising nature, the aggressiveness, 
and the natural love of expansion, which were traits 
of John Quincy Adams, became of highest service 
to his country in the diplomatic relations of the next 
few years. 

Hardly a year elapsed after this defiance to Eng- 
land when Adams met the claims of Russia likewise 
with a similar challenge. On September 4, 182 1, 

'Adams, Memoirs,V., 252. 



i824] MONROE DOCTRINE 209 

the Russian czar issued a ukase announcing the 
claim of Russia on the Pacific coast north of the 
fifty-first degree, and interdicting to the commerciai 
vessels of other powers the approach on the high seas 
within one hundred Italian miles of this claim.' 
This assertion of Russian monopoly, which would, 
in effect, have closed Bering Sea, met with peremp- 
tory refusal by Adams, and on July 17, 1823, having 
in mind Russia's posts in California, he informed the 
minister, Baron Tuyl, "that we should contest the 
right of Russia to any territorial establishment on 
this continent, and that we should assume distinctly 
the principle that the American continents are no 
longer subjects for any new European colonial estab- 
lishments." ^ After negotiations, Russia concluded 
the treaty of April 17, 1824, by which she agreed to 
form no establishments on the northwest coast south 
of latitude 54° 40', and the United States recipro- 
cally agreed to make no establishments north of that 
line. At the same time Russia abandoned her ex- 
treme claim of maritime jurisdiction. 

While the Russian claims were under considera- 
tion, the question of the future of Cuba was also 
giving great concern. The Pearl of the Antilles re- 
mained in the possession of Spain when she lost her 
main-land colonies. By its position, commanding 
both the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, it 
was of the highest importance to the United States 

1 U. S. Foreign Relations (rSgo), 439. 

2 Adams, Memoirs, VI., 163. 



2IO RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1822 

as well as to the West Indian powers, England and 
France. From a party in Cuba itself, in September, 
1822, advances were made to the United States for 
annexation, and Monroe sent an agent to investi- 
gate, meanwhile refraining from encouraging the 
movement.* 

George Canning, who became premier of England 
in September, 1822, was convinced that no questions 
relating to continental Europe could be more imme- 
diately and vitally important to Great Britain than 
those which related to America.^ Alarmed lest the 
United States should occupy Cuba, Canning, in a 
memorandum to the cabinet in November, ques- 
tioned whether any blow that could be struck by 
any foreign power in any part of the world would 
more affect the interests of England.^ He content- 
ed himself, however, with sending a naval force to 
the waters of Cuba and Puerto Rico, with the double 
purpose of checking American aggressions and pro- 
tecting English commerce. This action created sus- 
picion on the part of the United States, and Adams 
issued instructions (April 28, 1823) to the American 
minister at Madrid, declaring that, within a half- 
century, the annexation of Cuba to the United States 
would be indispensable to the continuance and in- 
tegrity of the Union itself. The laws of political 



' Adams, Memoirs, VI., 69, 72. 

' Stapleton, Official Corresp. of George Canning, I., 48. 
^ Ibid., 52; Royal Hist. Soc, Transactions (new series), XVIII., 
89. 



i822] MONROE DOCTRINE 211 

gravitation would, in his opinion, ultimately bring 
Cuba to this country, if, in the mean time, it were not 
acquired by some other power. Adams's immediate 
policy, therefore, favored the retention of Cuba and 
Puerto Rico by Spain, but he refused to commit the 
United States to a guarantee of the independence 
of Cuba against all the world except that power.* 

The mutual jealousies of the nations with respect 
to the destiny of Cuba became, at this time, en- 
tangled with the greater question of the interven- 
tion of the Holy Alliance in the New World. At the 
Congress of Verona, in November, 1822, Austria, 
France, Russia, and Prussia signed a revision of 
the treaty of the Holy Alliance,' which had for its 
objects the promotion of the doctrine of legitimacy 
in support of the divine right of rulers, and the doc- 
trine of intervention, for the purpose of restoring to 
their thrones those monarchs who had been deposed 
by popular uprisings, and of rehabilitating those 
who had been limited by written constitutions. At 
Verona, the allies agreed to use their efforts to put 
an end to the system of representative government 
in Europe, and to prevent its further introduction. 
Having already suppressed uprisings in Naples and 
Piedmont, the Alliance empowered France to send 
troops into the Spanish peninsula to restore the 

• Wharton, Digest of Am. Int. Law, I., 361-366; Latan^, Dip- 
lomatic Relations with Lat. Am., chap. iii. 

* Snow, Treaties and Topics; Seignobos, Pol. Hist, of Europe 
since 1814, 762. 



212 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1823 

authority of the king of Spain and to put down the 
revolutionary constitution of 1820. Chateaubriand, 
the French representative, desired the congress to 
go further and intervene in Spanish America, but 
this question was postponed. 

Alarmed by the prospect of French power in Spain 
and by the proposed extension of the system of the 
allies to the New World, Canning protested against 
the doctrine of intervention, and determined that, 
if France was to become the mistress of Spain, she 
should at least not control the old Spanish empire. 
In the spring of 1823 he made an unsuccessful effort 
to secure a pledge from France not to acquire any 
Spanish - American possessions, either by conquest 
or by cession from Spain. But the French govern- 
ment maintained its reserve, even after England 
disclaimed for herself the intention of acquiring 
Spanish-American territory.^ 

Having broken with the concert of the European 
powers, it was natural that England should turn to 
the United States, and it is very likely that the next 
step of Canning was influenced by the despatches of 
the British minister to the United States, who re- 
ported a conversation with Adams, in June, 1823, in 
which the secretary strongly set forth his belief that, 
in view of the virtual dissolution of the European 
alliance, England and the United States had much 
in common in their policy. "With respect to the 
vast continent of the West," said he, "the United 

* Stapleton, Political Life of Canning, I., 19. 



1823] MONROE DOCTRINE 213 

States must necessarily take a warm and decided 
interest in whatever determined the fate or affected 
the welfare of its component members." But he 
disclaimed any wish on the part of this country to 
obtain exclusive advantages there. He urged that 
England ought to recognize the independence of the 
revolted provinces, and he deprecated the conquest 
or cession of any part of them.* 

The first impression of the British minister, on 
hearing Adams's emphasis on the community of 
interests between the two nations, was that the 
secretary was suggesting an alliance ; and it may well 
have been that Canning was encouraged by the 
American attitude to make overtures to Rush, the 
American minister, shortly after these despatches 
must have reached him. On August 16, 1823, and 
three times thereafter, Canning proposed a joint 
declaration by England and the United States 
against any project by a European power of "a 
forcible enterprise for reducing the colonies to sub- 
jugation, on the behalf or in the name of Spain ; or 
which meditates the acquisition of any part of them 
to itself, by cession or by conquest." ^ Canning was 
willing to make public announcement that the re- 
covery of the colonies by Spain was hopeless ; that 
the matter of recognition was only a question of 

' Stratford Canning to George Canning, June 6, 1823, MSS. 
Foreign Office, America, CLXXVL; Adams, Memoirs, VI., 151; 
cf. Reddaway, Monroe Doctrine, 83. 

' Stapleton. Political Life of Canning, II., 24; W. C. Ford, in 
Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings (2d series), XV., 415. 



214 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1823 

time; and that Great Britain did not aim at the 
possession of any portion of them, but that it " could 
not see any part of them transferred to any other 
power with indifference." These professions Can- 
ning desired that the United States and England 
should mutually confide to each other and declare 
"in the face of the world." 

Confronted with Canning's important proposition, 
Rush, who doubted the disinterestedness of Eng- 
land, prudently attempted to exact a preliminary 
recognition of the Spanish-American republics; if 
Canning would agree to take this action, he would 
accept the responsibility of engaging in such a decla- 
ration.' Having failed in four successive efforts to 
persuade Rush to join in an immediate declaration, 
irrespective of prior recognition by England, Can- 
ning proceeded alone, and, in an interview with 
Polignac, the French minister in Lx^ndon, on Octo- 
ber 9, 1823, he announced substantially the princi- 
ples which he had expressed to the American min- 
ister.' Polignac thereupon disclaimed for France 
any intention to appropriate Spanish possessions in 
America, and abjured any design, on the part of his 
country, of acting against the colonies by force; 
but he significantly added that the future relations 
between Spain and her colonies ought to form a 
subject of discussion between the European powers. 
Acting on this idea, and in opposition to England's 

' Ford, in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings (2d series), XV., 420, 
423. ' Stapleton, Political Life of Canning, II., 26. 



1823] MONROE DOCTRINE 215 

wishes, an invitation was sent to Russia, Prussia, 
and Austria to confer at Paris on the relations of 
Spain and her revolted provinces. 

Rush's despatches relating the overtures of Can- 
ning reached President Monroe* October 9, 1823, 
on the same day that Canning was interviewing 
Polignac. Adams was absent from Washington at 
the time, and Monroe, returning to Virginia, con- 
sulted ex-Presidents Jefferson and Madison. He 
clearly intimated his own belief that the present 
case might be an exception to the general maxim 
against entanglement in European politics, and was 
evidently willing to accept the proposal of the Brit- 
ish government.^ 

To Jefferson ^ the question seemed the most mo- 
mentous since the Declaration of Independence. 
One nation, most of all, he thought, could disturb 
America in its efforts to have an independent sys- 
tem, and that nation, England, now offered " to lead, 
aid, and accompany us in it." He believed that 
by acceding to her proposition her mighty weight 
would be brought into the scale of free government, 
and "emancipate a continent at one stroke." Con- 
struing the English proposition to be a maintenance 
of our own principle of " keeping out of our land all 
foreign powers," he was ready to accept Canning's 
invitation. He was even ready to yield his desire 
for the annexation or independence of Cuba, in 

» Ford, in Ant. Hist. Rev., VII., 684. 

'Monroe, Writings, VI., 323. 'Ibid., VI., 394. 



2i6 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1823 

order to obtain England's co-operation. Madison,^ 
also, was prepared to accept the English proposal, 
and to invite that government to join in disapproval 
of the campaign of France in Spain and in a declara- 
tion in behalf of the Greeks, 

Thus, by a strange operation of fate, members of 
the "Virginia dynasty," the traditional antagonists 
of England, were now willing to accept her leader- 
ship in American affairs, and were inclined to min- 
gle in European concerns in opposition to the Holy 
AUiance. By an equally strange chance, it was a 
statesman from New England, the section tradition- 
ally friendly to British leadership, who prevented 
the United States from casting itself into the arms 
of England at this crisis, and who summoned his 
country to stand forth independently as the protec- 
tor of an American system. 

When John Ouincy Adams learned of Canning's 
proposals, he had just been engaged in a discussion 
with the representative of the czar, who informed 
him of the refusal of Russia to recognize the Spanish- 
American republics, and expressed the hope that 
America would continue her policy of neutrahty. 

While the cabinet had Rush's despatches under 
consideration, Adams received a second communi- 
cation from the Russian minister, expoimding the 
reactionary ideas of the Holy Alliance.^ To the 

* Madison, Writings (ed. of 1865), III., 339-341. 
^Ford, in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings (2d series), XV., 378, 
395, 402-408. 



1823] MONROE DOCTRINE 217 

secretary of state this was a challenge to defend 
the American ideas of liberty. Convinced that his 
country ought to decline the overture of Great Brit- 
ain and avow its principles explicitly to Russia and 
France, "rather than to come in as a cock-boat in 
the wake of the British man-of-war," Adams in- 
formed the president that the reply to Russia and 
the instructions to Rush in England must be part 
of a combined system of policy. " The ground that 
I wish to take," he said, "is that of earnest remon- 
strance against the interference of European powers 
by force with South America, but to disclaim all 
interference on our part with Europe; to make an 
American cause and adhere inflexibly to that." ^ 

In the cabinet he stood firmly against giving 
guarantees to England with respect to Cuba. He 
heartened up his colleagues, who were alarmed at 
the possibility of the spread of war to the United 
States ; but at the same time that he dismissed this 
danger as remote he pictured to the cabinet the 
alarming alternatives in case the allies subjugated 
Spanish America: California, Peru, and Chili might 
fall to Russia; Cuba, to England; and Mexico, to 
France. The danger was even at our doors, he de- 
clared, for within a few days the minister of France 
had openly threatened to recover Louisiana.^ Such 
suggestions exhibit the real significance of the prob- 

' Adams, Memoirs, VI., 178, 194, 197, 199-212. 
^ Ibid., VI., 207; cf. Reeves, in Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies, 
XXIII., Nos. 9, 10. 



2i8 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1823 

lem, which in truth involved the question of whether 
America should lie open to seizure by rival European 
nations, each fearful lest the other gain an undue 
advantage. It was time for the United States to 
take its stand against intervention in this hemi- 
sphere. 

Monroe was persuaded by Adams to change the 
first draught of his message, in which the president 
criticised the invasion of Spain by France and 
recommended the acknowledgment of the indepen- 
dence of the Greeks, in terms which seemed to 
threaten war with Europe on European questions. 
Even Webster and Clay, in fervent orations, showed 
themselves ready to go far towards committing 
the United States to an unwise support of the 
cause of the Greeks, which at this time was deeply 
stirring the sympathy of the United States. On the 
other hand, Adams stood firmly on the well-estab- 
lished doctrine of isolation from Europe, and of an 
independent utterance, by the United States, as the 
leader in the New World, of the principles of a purely 
American system. In the final draught, these ideas 
were all accepted, as well as the principles affirmed 
by Adams in his conferences with the Russian min- 
ister. 

When sent to Congress, on December 2, 1823, 
Monroe's message asserted " as a principle in which 
the rights and interests of the United States are 
involved, that the American continents, by the free 
and independent condition which they have assumed 



1823] MONROE DOCTRINE 219 

and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered 
as subjects for future colonization by any European 
powers." This was in effect the proclamation of 
the end of a process that began with Columbus, 
Cabot, and Cartier — the rivalry of the nations of 
the Old World in the discovery, occupation, and 
political control of the wild lands of the western 
hemisphere. The interpretation by the next ad- 
ministration left the enforcement of this general 
principle to the various American states according 
to their interests.* 

The message further dealt with the determination 
of the United States not to meddle with European 
affairs. "It is only when our rights are invaded or 
seriously menaced," said Monroe, "that we resent 
injuries or make preparation for our defense. With 
the movements in this hemisphere we are of neces- 
sity more immediately connected, and by causes 
which must be obvious to all enlightened and im- 
partial observers. The political system of the allied 
powers is essentially different in this respect from 
that of America." This declaration expressed the 
consciousness that there was a real American system 
contrasted with that of Europe and capable of sep- 
arate existence. 

Finally, the message met the immediate crisis by 
a bold assertion of the policy of the United States: 
" We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amica- 
ble relations existing between the United States and 

' See chap. xvi. below. 



220 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1823 

those powers to declare that we should consider any 
attempt on their part to extend their system to any 
portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace 
and safety. With the existing colonies or depend- 
encies of any European power we have not inter- 
fered and shall not interfere. But with the Govern- 
ments who have declared their independence and 
maintained it, and whose independence we have, on 
great consideration and on just principles, acknowl- 
edged, we could not view any interposition for the 
purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any 
other manner their destiny, by any European power 
in any other light than as the manifestation of an 
unfriendly disposition toward the United States." ^ 
Herein was the assertion of the well-established 
opposition of the United States to the doctrine of 
intervention as violating the equality of nations. 
It was the affirmation also of the equality of the Old 
and the New World in diplomatic relations, and 
the announcement of the paramount interest of the 
United States in American affairs.^ 

This classic statement of the position of the 
United States in the New World, therefore, applied 
an old tendency on the part of this country to a par- 
ticular exigency. Its authorship can hardly be at- 
tributed to any single individual, but its peculiar 

* Richardson, Messages and Papers, II., 207-218; cf. Hart, 
Foundations of Am. Foreign Policy, chap. vii. 

^ Moore, " Non - Intervention and the Monroe Doctrine," in 
Harper's Mag., CI X., 857. 



1823] MONROE DOCTRINE 221 

significance at this juncture lay in the fact that the 
United States came forward, unconnected with Eu- 
rope, as the champion of the autonomy and free- 
dom of America, and declared that the era of Euro- 
pean colonization in the New World had passed 
away. The idea of an American system, under the 
leadership of the United States, unhampered by 
dependence upon European diplomacy, had been 
eloquently and clearly voiced by Henry Clay in 
1820. But John Quincy Adams also reached the 
conception of an independent American system, and 
to him belongs the credit for the doctrine that the 
two Americas were closed to future political colo- 
nization. His office of secretary of state placed him 
where he was able to insist upon a consistent, clear- 
cut, and independent expression of the doctrine of 
an American system. Monroe's was the honor of 
taking the responsibility for these utterances.* 

Canning afterwards boasted, " I called the New 
World into existence to redress the balance of the 
Old." ^ Unquestionably his determination that "if 
France had Spain it should not be Spain with the 
Indies," materially contributed to make effective 
the protest of the United States, and he recognized 
the value of the president's message in putting 
an end to the proposal of a European congress. 
"It was broken," said he, "in all its limbs before, 

'Cf. Reddaway, Alonroe Doctrine, chap, v.; and Ford, in Am. 
Hist. Rev., VII., 676, VIII., 28. 

' Stapleton, Political Life of Canning, III., 227. 



222 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1825 

but the president's message gives it the coup de 
grdcer ' 

Nevertheless, the assertion by the United States 
of an American system independent of Europe, and 
the proposed exclusion of Europe from further col- 
onization were, in truth, as obnoxious to England 
as they were to France.^ "The great danger of the 
time," declared Canning in 1825, shortly after the 
British recognition of Mexico, " — a danger which 
the policy of the European system would have fos- 
tered — was a division of the world into European 
and American, republican and monarchical ; a league 
of wornout governments on the one hand and of 
youthful and stirring nations, with the United States 
at their head, on the other. We slip in between, and 
plant ourselves in Mexico. The United States have 
gotten the start of us in vain, and we link once more 
America to Europe." On December 17, 1824, Can- 
ning wrote : " Spanish America is free ; and if we do 
not mismanage our matters sadly, she is English, and 
novus soBclorum nascitur ordo.''^ 

Later events were to reveal how unsubstantial 
were the hopes of the British minister. For the 
present, his hands were tied by the fact that England 
and the United States had a common interest in safe- 
guarding Spanisli America ; and the form of Monroe's 

' Stapleton, George Canning and His Times, 395. 

' Reddaway, Monroe Doctri^te, 98. 

' Festing, J. H . Frere and His Friends, 267, quoted by E. M. 
Lloyd, in Royal Hist. Soc. Transactions (new series), XVIII., 
77. 93- 



1825] MONROE DOCTRINE 223 

declaration seemed less important than its effective- 
ness in promoting this result. In the United States 
the message was received with approbation. Al- 
though Clay, from considerations of policy, with- 
drew a resolution which he presented to Congress 
(January 20, 1824), giving legislative endorsement to 
the doctrine,^ there was no doubt of the sympathy of 
the American people with its fundamental principles. 
Together with the attitude of England, it put an end 
to the menace of the Holy Alliance on this side of the 
ocean, and it began a new chapter, yet unfinished, 
in the history of the predominance of the United 
States in the New World. 

• Annals of Cong., 18 Cong., i Sess., I., 1104, II., 2763. 

VOL. XIV. — 16 



CHAPTER XIII 

INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS 
(1818-1824) 

THE transformation by which the slender Hne 
of the Indian trail became the trader's trace, 
and then a road, superseded by the turnpike and 
canal, and again replaced by the railroad, is typical 
of the economic development of the United States. 
As the population of the west increased, its surplus 
products sought outlets. Improved means of com- 
munication became essential, and when these were 
furnished the new lines of internal trade knitted the 
nation into organic unity and replaced the former 
colonial dependence upon Europe, in the matter of 
commerce, by an extensive domestic trade between 
the various sections. From these changes flowed 
important political results.^ 

Many natural obstacles checked this process. The 
Appalachian mountain system cut off the seaboard 
of the United States from the interior. From the 
beginning, the Alleghanies profoundly influenced the 
course of American history, and at one time even 

' For the earlier phase of internal improvements, cf. Babcock, 
Am. Nationality (Am. Nation, XIII.), chap. xv. 



i82o] INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS 225 

endangered the permanency of the Union. In our 
own day the railroad has so reduced the importance 
of these mountains that it is difficult for us to realize 
the part which they once played in our development. 
Although Webster boasted that there were no Alle- 
ghanies in his politics, we have already seen * that in 
the twenties they exercised a dominant influence on 
the lines of internal commerce, and compelled the 
pioneer farmers to ship their surplus down the Missis- 
sippi to New Orleans and around the coast, and 
thence abroad and to the cities of the north. The dif- 
ficult and expensive process of wagoning goods from 
Philadelphia and Baltimore across the mountains 
to the Ohio Valley raised the price of manufactured 
goods to the western farmer; while, on the other 
hand, the cost of transportation for his crops left 
him little profit and reduced the value of his lands. ^ 
Under these circumstances, it was inevitable that 
the natural opportunities furnished by the water 
system of the Great Lakes and the widely ramifying 
tributaries of the Mississippi should appeal to states- 
men who considered the short distances that inter- 
vened between these navigable waters and the rivers 
that sought the Atlantic. Turnpikes and canals had 
already shown themselves practicable and profitable 
in England, so a natural effort arose to use them 
in aid of that movement for connecting east and west 
by ties of interest which Washington had so much at 

• See chaps, iii., vi., above. 
^Journ. of PoLit. Econ., VIII., 36-41. 



226 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1817 

heart. New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and 
Virginia, all subdivided by the mountains into east- 
ern and western sections, fostered roads and char- 
tered turnpike and canal companies. Pennsylvania 
was pre-eminent in this movement even before the 
close of the eighteenth century, subscribing large 
amounts to the stock of turnpike companies in order 
to promote the trade between Philadelphia and the 
growing population in the region of Pittsburg. So 
numerous were the projects and beginnings of roads 
and canals in the nation, that as early as 1808 the 
far-sighted Gallatin made his famous report for a 
complete national system of roads and canals.^ 

When New York undertook the Erie Canal in 181 7 
as a state enterprise, and pushed it to such a tri- 
umphant conclusion that before a decade after its 
completion its tolls repaid the cost of construction, 
a revolution was effected in transportation. The 
cheapness of water carriage not only cornpelled the 
freighters on the turnpike roads to lower their 
charges, but also soon made it probable that ca- 
nals would supersede land transportation for heavy 
freights, and even for passengers. For a time the 
power of Pittsburg and the activity of Philadel- 
phia merchants sustained the importance of the 
Pennsylvania turnpike. Until Great Lake steam 
navigation developed and population spread along 
the shore of Lake Erie and canals joined the Ohio 
and the lakes, the Erie Canal did not reap its harvest 
• Cf. Hart, Slavery and Abolition {Am. Nation, XVI.), chap. iii. 




86^ LoDgitude b'd' 



1824] INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS 227 

of trade in the west. But already Pennsylvania was 
alarmed at the prospect of losing her commercial 
ascendency. 

While New York and Philadelphia were develop- 
ing canals and turnpikes to reach the west, Balti- 
more was placed in an awkward position. The at- 
tempts to improve the waters of the upper Potomac 
engaged the interests of Maryland and Virginia from 
the days of Washington. But the success of the 
Potomac Company, chartered jointly by these two 
states in an effort to reach the Ohio trade, would 
have turned traffic towards the city of Washington 
and its outlying suburbs instead of towards Balti- 
more, which was already connected by a turnpike 
with the Cumberland Road, so as to share with Phila- 
delphia in the wagon trade to the Ohio. On the 
other hand, Baltimore was interested in the devel- 
opment of the Susquehanna's navigation, for this 
river had its outlet in Chesapeake Bay, near enough 
to Baltimore to make that city its entrepot; and 
it tapped the great valley of Pennsylvania as well 
as the growing agricultural area of south-central 
New York, which was not tributary to the Erie 
Canal. But it was not possible to expect New York, 
Pennsylvania, or even that part of Maryland inter- 
ested in the Potomac to aid these ambitions of 
Baltimore; and that city found itself at a disad- 
vantage and Maryland's interests were divided.^ 

' Hulbert, Historic Highways, XIII., 69 et seq.; Mills, Treatise 
on Inland Navig.; see chap, xvii., below. 



228 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1817 

Meantime, Virginia, anxious to check the western 
exodus from the interior of her state, established a 
state fund and a board of pubHc works for the im- 
provement of her rivers, including the project of con- 
necting the James and Kanawha/ North Carolina 
was agitating similar plans;* and South Carolina 
made appropriations for extensive improvements. 

New England devoted her attention to canals 
along the seaboard and up the Connecticut Valley, 
to give the products of the interior of that section an 
outlet on the coast. Boston was feeling the isolation 
from the western trade that was enriching New York, 
and some voices were raised in favor of a canal to 
reach the Hudson ; but the undertaking was too diffi- 
cult, and the metropolis of New England devoted its 
energies to the ocean commerce. 

Meantime, the west was urging the federal govern- 
ment to construct those interstate roads and canals 
which were essential to the prosperity of that section 
and which could not be undertaken by jealous and 
conflicting states. The veto by Madison of Calhoun's 
bonus bill, in 181 7,' was followed nine months later 
by Monroe's first annual message,^ in which he stated 
his belief that the Constitution did not empower 

» Babcock, Am. Nationality (Am. Nation, XIII.), chap. xv. ; 
Adams, United States, IX., 164. 

* Murphy, Memorial on Internal Improvements; Weaver, In- 
ternal Improvements in N.C. , in Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies, 

XXI., 113. 

* Cf. Babcock, Am. Nationality {Am. Nation, XIII.), chap, 
xvii. *Rj-hardson, Messages and Papers, II., 18. 



i8i8j INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS 229 

Congress to establish a system of internal improve- 
ments, and recommended an amendment to convey 
the power. To Clay and the friends of internal im- 
provements, these constitutional scruples of the Vir- 
ginia dynasty, although accompanied by approval 
of the plan of a system of internal improvements at 
federal expense, came as a challenge. In an impor- 
tant debate on the constitutionality of national in- 
ternal improvements, in 18 18, the House of Repre- 
sentatives, voting on four resolutions submitted by 
Lowndes, of South Carolina,^ declared that Congress 
had power to appropriate money for the construc- 
tion of military roads, and of other roads, and of 
canals, and for the improvement of watercourses 
(89 ayes to 75 nays).^ But after a debate which 
turned on the significance of the word "establish" 
in the Constitution, the House decided against the 
power to construct post-roads and military roads 
(81 to 84) ; against the power to construct roads and 
canals necessary to commerce between the states (7 1 
to 95) ; and against the power to construct canals for 
military purposes (81 to 83). 

It was clear after this debate that there was not 
a sufficient majority to override the veto which 
might be expected from the president. On the other 
hand, the majority were unwilling to hazard the 
rights which they claimed to possess, by appealing 
to the states for a constitutional amendment. The 

^Annals of Cong., 15 Cong., i Sess., I., 1249 
* By count of names; the Journal gives ayes 90. 



230 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1818 

next year Calhoun, the secretary of war, responding 
to an invitation of Congress, submitted a report out- 
lining a comprehensive system of internal improve- 
ments requisite for the defence of the United States. 
While avoiding an opinion on the question of con- 
stitutionality, he declared that a judicious system 
of roads and canals, constructed for commerce and 
the mail, would be " itself among the most efficient 
means for the more complete defense of the United 
States" ; ^ and he favored the use of the engineering 
corps for surveying the routes and of federal troops 
for the actual work of construction. 

By 1818 the National Road^ had been construct- 
ed from Cumberland, on the Potomac, across the 
mountains to W^heeling, on the Ohio, and two years 
later Congress made appropriations for a survey of 
the road westward to the Mississippi River. The 
panic of 18 19, however, left the treasury in such a 
condition that it was not until 1822 that the preser- 
vation and construction of this highway was again 
taken up with vigor. In that year a bill was intro- 
duced authorizing the president to cause toll-houses, 
gates, and turnpikes to be erected on the Cumber- 
land Road, and to appoint toll-gatherers, with power 
to enforce the collection of tolls to be used for the 
preservation of the road. The bill further provided 



^ Am. State Paps., Miscellaneous, 534. 

* Cf. Babcock, Am. Nationality {Am. Nation, XIII.), chap. 
XV.; Young, Cumberland Road, 15; Hulbert, Historic Highways, 
X., chap. i. 



i82 2] INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS 231 

for a system of fines for violation of the laws of the 
road. It therefore involved the question of the right 
of jurisdiction as well as of construction. 

The measure passed the House of Representatives 
by a vote of 87 to 68. The districts along the line 
of the Potomac and the Ohio, and the regions tribu- 
tary to the road in Pennsylvania and western Vir- 
ginia, were almost a unit in favor of the bill. In- 
deed, the whole vote of the western states, with the 
exception of two members from Tennessee, was given 
in the affirmative. But Pittsburg, which feared the 
diversion of her western trade to Baltimore, opposed 
the bill. The area along the Susquehanna which 
looked to Baltimore also voted in the negative, as 
did the majority of the delegation from New York, 
who were apprehensive of the effect of the National 
Road as a rival to the Erie Canal. The Senate 
passed the bill by the decisive vote of 29 to 7. 

Monroe vetoed this measure, on the ground that 
it implied a power to execute a complete system of 
internal improvements, with the right of jurisdic- 
tion and sovereignty. Accompanying his veto (May 
4, 1822), he submitted "Views on the Subject of 
Internal Improvements." ^ In this elaborate dis- 
quisition, he rehearsed the constitutional history of 
internal improvements, and expounded his concep- 



* Richardson, Messages and Papers, II., 142-183; Monroe, 
Writings, Yl., 216; Mason, Veto Power, §85; 'Nelson, Presidential 
Influence on Int. Imp. (Iowa Journal of Hist, and Politics) , IV., 

29. 30- 



232 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1822 

tion of the construction of the Constitution, and of 
the relation of the states and the nation under the 
theory of divided sovereignty. Although he denied 
to the federal government the right of jurisdiction 
and construction, he asserted that Congress had un- 
limited power to raise money, and that " in its appro- 
priation, they have a discretionary power, restricted 
only by their duty to appropriate it to purposes of 
common defense and of general, not local, national, 
not state, benefit." Nevertheless, he strongly rec- 
ommended a system of internal improvements, if it 
could be established by means of a constitutional 
amendment. Both houses sustained the president's 
veto. 

Acting upon Monroe's intimation of the power to 
appropriate money, and following the line of least 
resistance, the next year an act was passed making 
appropriations for repairs of the Cumberland Road. 
On March 3, 1823, also, was signed the first of the 
national acts for the improvement of harbors.^ 
The irresistible demand for better internal com- 
munications and the development of a multitude of 
local projects, chief among them a new plan for unit- 
ing Chesapeake Bay with the Ohio by a canal along 
the Potomac, resulted, in 1824, in the introduction of 
the general survey bill, authorizing the president to 
cause surveys to be made for such roads and canals 
as he deemed of national importance for commercial, 
military, or postal purposes. The evident intention 

» U. S. Statutes at Large, III., 780. 




HOUSE VOTE 

ON 

SURVEY BILL 

FEIJRUARY 10, 1834 

SCALE OF MILES 



□ For ' I \Erenlii divided 

I I undistrlcted. 

h-z] Against \ Not voting 

OdMAr & CO.. N. y. 



i824] INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS 233 

of the bill was to prepare a programme for appro- 
priations for internal improvements on a national 
scale, and for subscription to the stock of companies 
engaged in these enterprises. The discussion of the 
general survey bill brought out the significance of 
the problem of transportation, and revealed the sec- 
tional divisions of the nation in clear light. 

Henry Clay made an earnest effort to commit Con- 
gress to the exercise of the power of construction of 
interstate highways and canals which could not be 
undertaken by individual states or by combinations 
of states, and which, if built at all, must be by the 
nation. He recounted the attention given by Con- 
gress to the construction of public buildings and 
light-houses, coast surveys, erection of sea-walls in 
the Atlantic states — "everything on the margin of 
the ocean, but nothing for domestic trade ; nothing 
for the great interior of the country." ^ "Not one 
stone," he said, " had yet been broken, not one spade 
of earth removed, in any Western State." He boldly 
claimed that the right to regulate commerce granted 
as fully the power to construct roads and canals for 
the benefit of circulation and trade in the interior as 
it did the power to promote coastwise traffic. His 
speech was a strong assertion of the right of the west 
to equality of treatment with the old sections of the 
country. "A new world," said he, "has come into 
being since the Constitution was adopted. Are the 
narrow, limited necessities of the old thirteen states, 

' Annals of Cong., 18 Cong., i Sess., I., 1035. 



234 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1824 

of, indeed, parts only of the old thirteen states, as they 
existed at the formation of the present Constitution, 
forever to remain the rule of its interpretation?"* 

In contrast with the united attitude of the west 
upon internal improvements, which Henry Clay 
voiced with such lofty accent, the south showed 
divisions which reflected opposing economic inter- 
ests in the section. Not only were the representa- 
tives of Maryland almost a unit in support of the bill, 
but also the western districts of Virginia and North 
Carolina, as well as a considerable fraction of the 
representatives from South Carolina and Georgia, 
supported the cause of the west on this occasion. 

The opposition in the south found, perhaps, its 
most inflexible expression in the speech of John 
Randolph,^ who, with characteristic recklessness and 
irresponsibility, dragged from its closet the family 
skeleton of the south, and warned his fellow slave- 
holders that, if Congress possessed power to do what 
was proposed by the bill, they might emancipate 
every slave in the United States, " and with stronger 
color of reason than they can exercise the power 
now contended for." He closed by threatening 
the formation of associations and " every other 
means short of actual insurrection." "We shall 
keep on the windward side of treason," said he.^ . 

1 Annals of Cong., 18 Cong., i Sess., I., 1315; Colton, Private 
Carres p. of Clay, 81. 

^Annals of Cong., 18 Cong., i Sess., I., 1296-1311. 

^ Cf. Macon's identical views in 18 18 and 1824, Univ. of North 
Carolina, James Sprunt Hist. Monographs, No. 2, pp. 47, 72. 



1824] INTERNAL IMPROVEMENT 235 

On the other hand, McDuffie, of South CaroHna, 
the friend and protege of Calhoun and a later leader 
of the nullification forces, supported the measure and 
spoke as earnestly in favor of a liberal construction 
of the Constitution as any of the most enthusiastic 
supporters of the bill. He declared that the consti- 
tutional convention "did not regard the state gov- 
ernments as sentinels upon the watch-towers of free- 
dom, or in any respect more worthy of confidence 
than the general government." 

When the bill came to the final vote in the House 
of Representatives, New England gave 12 votes in 
favor and 26 against; the middle states, 37 to 26 
(New York, 7 to 24) ; the south, 23 to 34; the west, 
43 to o. Thus the bill carried by 115 to 86. As the 
map shows, the opposition was chiefly located in 
New England and New York and in a fragment of 
the old south. The entire west, including the south- 
western slave states, with Pennsylvania and the 
Potomac Valley, acted together. In the Senate, the 
vote stood 24 to 18. Here New England gave an 
almost solid vote against the bill. 

Thus by the close of Monroe's administration the 
forces of nationalism seemed to have triumphed in 
the important field of internal improvements. It 
was the line of least resistance then, as it had been 
in the days of the Annapolis Convention.* 

' McLaughlin, Confederation and Constitution {Am. Nation, 
X.), chap. xi. 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE TARIFF OF 1824 
(1820-1824) 

AS has been shown in the last chapter, the atti- 
i tude of portions of the south towards strict 
construction was not inveterate upon measures 
which promised advantages to that section. But 
the tariff struggle revealed the spirit which arose 
when powers were asserted unfavorable to any sec- 
tion. The failure of the tariff bill of 1820* was fol- 
lowed by other unsuccessful attempts to induce a 
majority of Congress to revive the subject. The 
messages of Monroe favored a moderate increase of 
duties; but it was not until 1824, after the return of 
Henry Clay and his triumphant election to the speak- 
ership, that Congress showed a protectionist major- 
ity ably disciplined and led.' 

The tariff bill of 1824 was supported, not as a 
revenue, but as a protective measure. It proposed 
an increase of the duty upon iron, hemp, cotton 
bagging, woollens, and cottons. Upon woollen goods, 

1 See above, chap. ix. 

* For previous tariff history, cf . Babcock, Ant. Nationality 
(Am. Nation, XIII.), chap. xiv. 



i824] THE TARIFF 237 

the friends of protection desired to apply the mini- 
mum principle which the tariff of 181 6 had pro- 
vided for cotton goods. But the cheap woollens 
were mostly used for the clothing of southern slaves, 
and the proposition for an increase of duty met 
with so strenuous a resistance that in the outcome 
the cheap foreign goods bore a lower rate of duty 
than did the high-priced products. Although the 
act somewhat increased the protection upon woollen 
fabrics as a whole, this was more than offset by the 
increased duty which was levied upon raw wool in 
response to the demand of the wool-raising interests 
of the country.* 

Another struggle occurred over the protection of 
hemp. This product was used both for the manu- 
facture of the ropes essential to New England ship- 
ping and for the cotton bagging used in the south. 
Thus the shipping and the slave - holding sections 
were brought into union in opposition to the pro- 
vision. Nevertheless, this important Kentucky in- 
terest received a substantial protection. The at- 
tempt to secure a marked increase of the duty on 
iron bars resulted in a compromise proposition which 
satisfied neither party and had little eft'ect upon 
domestic manufacture, while it increased the cost to 
the consumer. The Senate amendments reduced 
the proposed rates on the most important articles, 
so that, on the whole, the extreme protectionists 
failed to carry their programme, although the bill 

' Taussig, Tariff Hist., 75. 



238 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1824 

increased the duties upon the articles most essential 
to the shipping and planting sections sufficiently to 
leave great discontent/ 

In the debates upon this tariff, Henry Clay led 
the protectionist forces, basing his arguments upon 
the general distress of the country, which he ex- 
plained by the loss of the foreign market for agricult- 
ural products, and which he would remedy by build- 
ing up a home market by means of the support of 
manufactures — the creation of an "American sys- 
tem." "We must naturalize the arts in our coun- 
try," said he. Not the least significant portion of 
his plea for protection was that in which he called 
attention to the great diversity of interests — " agri- 
cultural, planting, farming, commercial, navigating, 
fishing, manufacturing" — within the United States. 
Some of these interests were, as he said, peculiar to 
particular sections. " The inquiry should be in refer- 
ence to the great interests of every section of the 
Union (I speak not of minute subdivisions) ; what 
would be done for those interests if that section 
stood alone and separated from the residue of the 
Republic ? If they come into absolute collision with 
the interests of another section, a reconciliation, if 
possible, should be attempted, by mutual concession, 
so as to avoid a sacrifice of the prosperity of either 
to that of the other." ^ 

1 Stanwood, Amer. Tariff Controversies, I., chap. vii. 
' Annals of Cong., 18 Cong., i Sess., II., 1997; cf. Clay's letter 
to Brooke, August 28, 1823, Clay, Private Corresp., 81. 



1824] THE TARIFF 239 

Perhaps the ablest speech on the other side was 
that of Webster,* who ridiculed Clay's discovery, 
"This favorite American policy," said he, "is what 
America has never tried, and this odious foreign 
policy is what, as we are told, foreign states have 
never pursued." He denied the existence of gen- 
eral depression, although he admitted that profits 
were lower and prices considerably depressed. Web- 
ster's argument included an analysis of the theory 
of protection as against free-trade, in which he made 
a classical statement of the opposition to protection. 
In short, he represented the attitude of the com- 
mercial classes, particularly those of New England, 
whose interests were injured by any restraint of the 
freedom of exchange. As yet these classes exercised 
a dominant influence in Massachusetts. 

Senator Hayne, of South Carolina, also argued the 
case against the tariff with a grasp and power of pres- 
entation that was hardly second to that of Webster. 
In particular he protested against compelling the 
planting regions to pay the cost of a protective sys- 
tem. Two-thirds of the whole amount of the do- 
mestic exports of the United States, he argued, were 
composed of cotton, rice, and tobacco, and from this 
trade arose the imports of manufactured goods which 
paid the revenues of the United States, and which 
the protective system rendered expensive and bur- 
densome to his section. He warned the manufact- 
urers that the south would repeal the system at the 

' Webster, Writings (National ed.), V., 94-149. 

VOL. XIV. — 17 



240 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1824 

first opportunity, regardless of interests that might 
accrue under the proposed measure.* 

In the speeches of some of the representatives of 
the south was a note of revolt not to be found in 
Webster's argument. For the first time in the dis- 
cussion of the tariff, the constitutional objection was 
made prominent. It was argued that the power to 
impose taxes and duties was given for the purpose 
of raising revenue, not for the purpose of protec- 
tion. If not the letter, at least the spirit, of the 
Constitution was violated, so it was charged, by this 
distortion of the power of taxation. The proceed- 
ings of the constitutional convention were recited to 
show that a proposition conferring the alleged pow- 
er was voted down. To this. Clay gave the reply 
that the clause on which the protectionists relied 
was the power to regulate commerce with foreign 
nations. 

Even the south, however, laid less stress upon the 
constitutional argument than upon the injustice to 
the section, McDuffie, for example, replying to 
Clay,^ argued that no one of the great sections of 
the country, if it were a separate nation, could ad- 
vantageously apply the system of protection. He 
warned the western states that the system would 
make them tributary to the Atlantic states,' and 
that they had more to lose by alienating the friend- 
ship of the south for a system of internal improve- 

^ Annals of Cong., 18 Cong., i Sess., I., 618. 

' Ibid., II., 2400 et seq. ^ Ibid., II., 2423. 



1824] THE TARIFF 241 

merits which should faciHtate the sale of their meat 
products to the south than by a union with the man- 
ufacturing interests. With respect to the south it- 
self, he declared that cotton, which alone constituted 
one-third of the whole export of the Union, was in 
danger of losing the market of England if we ceased 
to take the manufactures of that country. Protest- 
ing that the protective system would strike at the 
root of their prosperity, by enhancing the cost of the 
clothing of their slaves and the bagging used to cover 
their cotton-bales, while at the same time it put to 
hazard the sale of their great staple in the English 
market, he yet declared that, if the bill should pass, 
"even with a majority of a single vote, I shall, as 
bound by my allegiance, submit to it as one of the 
laws of my country." 

But if this South Carolina leader represented the 
attitude of his state in showing moderation at this 
time,* not so did the free-lance John Randolph, of 
Virginia. "I do not stop here, sir," said he, "to 
argue about the constitutionality of this bill ; I con- 
sider the Constitution a dead letter ; I consider it to 
consist, at this time, of the power of the General Gov- 
ernment and the power of the States — that is the 
Constitution." "I have no faith in parchment, sir; 
... I have faith in the power of the commonwealth 
of which I am an unworthy son." "If, under a 
power to regulate trade, you prevent exportation; 
if, with the most approved spring lancets, you draw 

' See Ames, State Docs, on Federal Relations, No. 4, p. 6. 



242 



RISE OF THE NEW WEST 



[1824 



the last drop of blood from our veins ; if, secundum 
artem, you draw the last shilling from our pockets, 
what are the checks of the Constitution to us? A 
fig for the Constitution! When the scorpion's sting 
is probing to the quick, shall we stop to chop logic ? 
. . . There is no magic in this word union." While 
he threatened forcible resistance, he rejoiced in the 
combination of the shipping and commercial classes 
of New England with the south in opposition to the 
measure. "The merchants and manufacturers of 
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, the province of 
Maine and Sagadahock," said he, "repel this bill, 
whilst men in hunting-shirts, with deer-skin leggings 
and moccasins on their feet, want protection for 
manufactures." 

The bill passed the House of Representatives on 
April 16, 1824, by the close vote of 107 to 102, and 
subsequently passed the Senate by a small majority: 





New England 


Middle Region 


South 




s: 


y. 


<: 


f? 


J« 





H 


7; 


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*i3 


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M 





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a 







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M 

m 


t— ( 


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E. 


K' 


■— . 












p 


P 




E. 


Ayes .... 


I 


I 


5 


I 


2 


5 


IS 


26 


6 


24 


I 


57 


3 


I 











4 


Nays .... 


6 


5 





II 





I 


23 


8 





I 





9 


6 


21 


13 


9 


7 


S6 





Northwest and Kentucky 


Southwest 








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p. 


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2 


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Total 


Ayes 


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29 


2 


107 


Nays .... 





7 


3 


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M 


102 



1824] THE TARIFF 243 

By this analysis and the map, it is clear that the 
navigating states were in opposition, while the man- 
ufacturing states were generally in favor of the 
bill. The most important textile manufacturers 
of Massachusetts, however, were not advocates 
of protection at this time. The grain and wool 
producing states gave an overwhelming vote (91 
to 9) in favor of the attempt to provide a home 
market. The planting states gave but 3 votes in 
favor to 64 against.^ By comparison with the map 
of the general survey bill, it is seen that the south- 
ern half of the west was in a state of unstable 
equilibrium on these sectional issues. It joined the 
Ohio Valley and the middle states in supporting a 
system of internal improvements, while it trans- 
ferred its support to the old south on the question 
of the tariff. New England, on the other hand, 
although divided, tended to unite its strength with 
that of the south on both these measures. In gen- 
eral, the map reveals the process of forming a 
northern section in opposition to the south — the 
union of the Ohio Valley with the middle states 
against the alliance of the south Atlantic seaboard 
with the Gulf states. The division of forces ex- 
hibited in the Missouri struggle was strikingly like 
the division now revealed on the tariff question. 

On the whole, the tariff of 1824 was distinctly a 
compromise measure. Although the ad valorem 
duties on cotton and woollen goods were raised, 

' See the analysis in Niles' Register, XXVI., 113. 



244 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1824 

this was balanced by the doubled duty on raw 
wool. Nevertheless, it aroused the opposition of 
the entire planting section, at the same time that 
the manufacturers of woollen goods felt that their 
interests had been sacrificed. The tariff question 
was, in fact, only postponed. In the history of 
party development, however. Clay's system of in- 
ternal improvements and tariff, as shown in this 
session of Congress, had a significance not easily 
missed ; and state sovereignty sentiment in the south 
grew steadily after these measures.* 

> See chapter xviii, below; cf. Ames, State Docs, on Federal 
Relations, No. 4, pp. 4-12. 



CHAPTER XV 

THE ELECTION OF 1824 
(1822-1825) 

AS we have seen/ the dissensions in Monroe's 
L cabinet approached the point of rupture by the 
spring and summer of 1822, when the spectacle was 
presented of the friends of the secretary of the treas- 
ury making war upon the measures of the secretary 
of war, and even antagonizing the president himself. 
Crawford's followers gained the name of the "radi- 
cals," and declared as their principles, democracy, 
economy, and reform.^ Professing to represent the 
pure Jeffersonian republicanism of the "Revolution 
of 1800," they appealed to the adherents of the Vir- 
ginia school of politics for support.' Jefferson, al- 
though refusing to come out openly, was clearly in 
sympathy with Crawford's candidacy: he believed 
that the old parties still continued, although under 
different names, and that the issue would finally be 
reduced to a contest between a northern and a 
southern candidate. 

' See above, chap. x. 

* Adams, Memoirs, VI., 56; Mass. Hist. Soc, Proceedings, 
XIX., 40. ' Edwards, Illinois, 489. 



246 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1823 

"You see," said he, in a letter to Gallatin, "many 
calling themselves Republicans and preaching the 
rankest doctrine of the old Federalists. One of the 
prominent candidates [Adams] is presumed to be of 
this party ; ihe other [Crawford] a Republican of the 
old school, and a friend to the barrier of state rights, 
as provided by the Constitution against the danger 
of consolidation." * Pennsylvania and New York, 
he thought, would decide the question, and the issue 
would depend upon whether or not the "Missouri 
principle" became involved. 

At this time parties and principles were still plas- 
tic. This is illustrated by a letter written in the 
spring of 1823 to Monroe, by John Taylor, of Caro- 
line, the leading exponent of the orthodox Virginia 
tenets of state sovereignty. The writer was evi- 
dently stirred by the recent publication, in Calhoun's 
Washington organ, of a series of letters signed A. B.,^ 
in which Crawford was denounced for corrupt deal- 
ings with the banks, collusion with slave-traders, and 
intrigues in general. Calhoun himself had just end- 
ed a visit with Taylor when the latter wrote, bitterly 
condemning the "example of obtaining the presi- 
dency by crafty intrigues and pecuniary influence," 
as tending to transfer power to a moneyed aristoc- 
racy. Neither Calhoun nor Adams, in his opinion, 



'Jefferson, Writings (Ford's ed.), X., 235; cf. 225-227, 237, 
261, 264. 280. 

* Edwards, Illinois, 525; National Intelligencer, April 21-23, 
1823; Am. State Paps.. Finance, V., 1-145. 



1823] PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 247 

was open to this objection, and neither of them, he 
thought, would prefer a protective tariff to a navy 
as a means of national defence. While he admitted 
his ignorance of Adams's views on the subject of 
division of power between the federal and state gov- 
ernments, he declared that Calhoun had no advan- 
tage on this point, for although the latter professed 
to consider the distribution of powers between the 
states and the central authority as " a distinguishing 
pre-eminence in our form of government," yet, in 
the opinion of Taylor, he destroyed "this pre-emi- 
nence by endowing the federal government with a 
supremacy over the state governments whenever 
they come in conflict." This was important testi- 
mony, following immediately on Calhoun's visit, and 
coming from the pen of a man who was primarily 
interested in the question. 

In spite of these objections, which would seem to 
be insuperable from the point of view of this distin- 
guished expositor of state sovereignty, Taylor was 
ready to take the initiative in a movement against 
Crawford, if Monroe, Jefferson, and Madison agreed. 
Although as between Calhoun and Adams, he inti- 
mated that "the Missouri question" made a distinc- 
tion of considerable weight,^ he did not press the 
point. James Barbour, the other senator from Vir- 

' Taylor to Monroe, April 29, 1823, Monroe Papers, MSS. in 
Cong. Libr.; cf. "Fanner's" attacks on Crawford as a protec- 
tionist, in Richmond Enquirer, noted in Niles' Register, XXIV., 
306. See Calhoun to Gouvemeur, April 28, 1823, N. Y. Publ. 
Libr., Bulletin, 1899, p. 324; Adams, Memoirs, VI., 356. 



248 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1823 

ginia, also seriously thought of supporting Adams,' 
and it is clear that the secretary of state at this 
time was not regarded as unsafe in the Old Do- 
minion. 

In the spring and summer of 1823, however, Craw- 
ford seemed to be clearly in the lead. He was sup- 
ported by a well-organized press, which took its tone 
from the Washington newspapers; and until Cal- 
houn, in retaliation, established a paper of his own 
to denounce Crawford's management of his depart- 
ment, he had effective control of the most influential 
organs of public opinion.^ He was a master of po- 
litical manipulation; but among his rivals were men 
of almost equal skill in this respect. 

Clay was again chosen speaker, on his return to 
the House of Representatives in December, 1823, by 
a triumphant majority, and, as the session advanced, 
he and Calhoun, with all the arts of fascinating con- 
versation, plied the old and new members. At this 
critical period in his campaign, Crawford was over- 
whelmed by a stroke of paralysis (September, 1823), 
which wrecked his huge frame and shattered his 
career. Shut in a darkened room, threatened with 
blindness and the loss of speech, bled by the doctors 
twenty-three times in three weeks, unable to sign 
his official papers with his own hand, he was pre- 
vented from conducting his own political battle. 

•Adams, Memoirs, VI., 242, 450-452; see also Taylor's in- 
terview with Adams, May 26, 1824, ibid., 356, 357. 
* Ibtd.. 47, 56, 57, 60, 62-64, 66. 



1823.1 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 249 

But he kept his courage and his purpose, concealing 
his real condition from all but his most trusted in- 
timates. Not until April, 1824, was he able to attend 
cabinet meetings, and within a month after that he 
suffered a relapse, which prevented his active par- 
ticipation in his duties until the fall.^ 

Adams had the New England scruples against 
urging his cause personally, and took the attitude 
that the office of president should come from merit, 
not from manipulation.^ Moreover, he saw that the 
practice of soliciting votes from members of Con- 
gress would render the executive subservient to that 
body. Although his uncompromising temper un- 
fitted him for the tactics of political management, 
he was an adept in the grand strategy of the contest, 
and he noted every move of his adversaries. His 
replies to attacks were crushing, for he had the gift 
of clear and forcible exposition.' But his greatest 
strength in the presidential contest lay in the fact 
that he was the only promising northern candidate. 

Early in the campaign, Calhoun commented on the 
fact that five candidates were from the slave-holding 
states — a circumstance which, in his opinion,would 

* National Intelligencer, September 15, 1824; Life of W. W. 
Seaton, 160; King, Life and Carres p. of King, VI., 539; Adams, 
Memoirs, VI., 130, 270, 275, 356, 357, 387, 428, 435, 439; Univ. 
of North Carolina, James Sprunt Hist. Monographs, No. 2, pp. 
69, 71; Edwards, Illinois, 492. 

* Adams, Mem-oirs, IV., 64, 242, 298, V., 89, 129, 29S, 525; 
Dwight, Travels, I., 266. 

* Adams, Memoirs, V., 361, 496-535, VI., 116-118; King, Life 
and Corresp. of King, VI., 475; Gallatin, Writings, II., 246. 



250 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1823 

give Adams great advantages if he knew how to im- 
prove them/ Naturally, therefore, Adams gained 
the influential support of Rufus King, the chief 
antagonist of the slave section. At first decidedly 
hostile, King's final adhesion was given to him, not 
out of personal regard, but because he believed that 
the public should be aroused against "longer sub- 
mission to a Southern Master. . . . He is the only 
northern Candidate, and as between him and the 
black Candidates I prefer him." ^ Steadily Adams 
increased his following in reluctant New England.' 
In New York he had an element of strength in the 
fact that the population was nearly evenly divided 
between the natives of that state and the settlers 
from New England. Of the delegation from the 
state of New York in the seventeenth Congress, for 
example, those who were born in New England 
were about equal to those born in the state itself. 
Nearly forty per cent, of the members of the New 
York constitutional convention of 182 1 were bom 
in New England.'* The adhesion of ex-Speaker 
Taylor, another of the champions of restriction in 
the Missouri struggle, furnished an able manager in 
New York. 

Even the attitude of Van Buren was for a time in 

' Edwards, Illinois, 492. 

' King, Lije and Corresp. of King, VI., 508, 510. 

' Niles' Register, XXIIl., 322, 342; Clay, Private Corresp., 
98; Adams, Memoirs, VI., 235. 

* King, Lije and Corresp. of King, VT., 413; Carter and Stone. 
Reports of New York Convention, 637; Force, Calendar (1823). 



i824] PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 251 

doubt, for he would gladly have retired from politics 
to accept a place on the bench of the supreme court 
of the United States; but Adams and King pressed 
his candidacy for this position in vain upon the 
president, and Van Buren finally gave his full sup- 
port to Crawford.* 

So little did Adams appreciate the popular move- 
ment that was gathering about Jackson's name, that 
he advised his followers to support the "Old Hero" 
for the vice-presidency, " a station in which the Gen- 
eral could hang no one, and in which he would need 
to quarrel with no one. His name and character 
would serve to restore the forgotten dignity of the 
place, and it would afford an easy and dignified re- 
tirement to his old age." ^ In January, 1824, on the 
anniversary of the victory of New Orleans, Adams 
gave a great ball, attended by over a thousand peo- 
ple, in honor of his rival. ^ 

After Jackson's return from the governorship of 
Florida, in 1821, his star steadily rose in the political 
horizon. His canvass was conducted by his neigh- 
bor. Major Lewis, who was one of the most astute 
politicians in American history, able subtly to influ- 
ence the attitude of his volcanic candidate and to 
touch the springs of political management. On July 

* King, Life and Corresp. of King, VI., 512-517, 520-527; 
Adams, Memoirs, VI., 168, 173; Crawford to Van Buren, August 
I, 1823, Van Buren Papers (MSS.); Am. Hist. Assoc, Report 
1904, p. 178. 

'Adams, Memoirs, VI., 333. 

' Ibid., 2 2q; Sargent, Public Men and Events, I.. 48-51. 



252 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1822 

20, 1822, the legislature of Tennessee formally nom- 
inated the general for the presidency.* 

This gave the signal of revolt by the states against 
the congressional caucus. Clay rallied his own 
forces, and in 1822 and 1823 was nominated^ by mem- 
bers of the legislatures of Missouri, Kentucky, Ohio, 
and Louisiana.' Alabama nominated Jackson; and 
Mississippi, by a tie vote, proposed both Adams and 
Jackson.^ These nominations by states showed that, 
however the west might be divided, it was a unit in 
resistance to the selection of a president by a com- 
bination of congressmen. It was believed that the 
spirit of the Constitution was violated by this method, 
which made the executive depend on the legislative 
body for nomination ; and that a minority candidate 
might win by the caucus. This became the rallying 
cry of Jackson, whose canvass was conducted on the 
issue of the right of the people to select their presi- 
dent;^ and the prevalent discontent and industrial 
depression made the voters responsive to this idea. 
The movement was one of permanent significance in 
American history, for it represented the growth of 
democracy, and led the way to the institution of the 
national nominating convention. 

' Parton, Jackson, III., 20; Miles' Register, XXII., 402. 

* Niles' Register, XXIII., 245, 342; Ohio Monitor, January 4, 
1823; National Republican (Cincinnati) , January 14,1823; King, 
Life and Corresp., VI., 487; Clay, Private Corresp., 70. 

^National Intelligencer, April 12, 1823; Ky. Reporter, April 

21, 1823. * McMaster, United States, V., 6S. 

* Sargent, Public Men and Events, I., 57; Parton, Jackson, 
III., 17, 40, 41. 



1824] PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 253 

In the fall of 1823, Tennessee returned Jackson to 
the Senate, having chosen him over one of the prom- 
inent leaders of the Crawford party, and, shortly 
afterwards, the legislature sent to the other states 
a vigorous resolution, asking them to unite in put- 
ting down the congressional caucus.^ In Virginia 
and many other states the Tennessee resolutions 
gave rise to agitation which strengthened the pop- 
ular feeling against congressional dictation.^ Al- 
though Adams at first considered the congressional 
caucus as one of the " least obnoxious modes of in- 
trigue," he also finally threw his influence against 
the system and announced that he would not accept 
a nomination by that body.^ 

Realizing that, in spite of his illness, Crawford 
could command the largest following in Congress, 
the friends of all the other candidates united their 
forces in an effort to prevent the meeting of the 
caucus. Already it was evident to the Georgian's 
supporters that the only thing that could bring him 
the victory was insistence upon party unity and dis- 
cipline, and on February 14, 1824, sixty-six of the 
two hundred and sixteen Democrats in Congress 
gathered for the last congressional caucus which 
nominated a president. That these were practically 
all Crawford men was shown by his nomination with 

* Parton, Jackson, IIL, 21; Niles' Register, XXV., 114, 137, 
197, 292; McMaster, United States, V., 60; Tyler, Tylers, I., 341; 
Richmond Enquirer, January i, 6, 13, 1824. 

* McMaster, United States, V., 60-62, 64; Dallinger, Nomina^ 
tions, 19 n., 54. ' Adams, Memoirs, VL, 191, 236. 



254 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1824 

only four opposing votes. ^ Gallatin had been per- 
suaded to return from Paris, and he received the 
nomination for vice-president, in order to hold the 
state of Pennsylvania in Crawford's column; but 
it proved a forlorn hope, for this old companion-in- 
arms of Jefferson found Pennsylvania "Jackson mad." 
Calhoun, seeing that he had lost the northern 
state on which he had founded his hopes of success, 
and despairing of making inroads upon Crawford's 
southern forces after the congressional caucus, sought 
his political fortunes in an alliance with his rival. ^ 
The result was that, in a state nominating conven- 
tion held at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (March 4, 
1824), Jackson was almost unanimously nominated 
by that state for president, and Calhoun was named 
for the vice-presidency. In vain the managers of 
Crawford sought to throw discredit upon Jackson 
by the publication of his correspondence with Mon- 
roe, in which he had pleaded for recognition of the 
Federalists;^ the letters added to his strength, and 
finally Gallatin was induced to withdraw from the 
unequal contest, in order that an attempt might be 
made to persuade Henry Clay to accept the vice- 
presidency under Crawford.^ 

' Dallinger, Nominations, 19; Niles' Register, XXV., 388-392, 
403; Hammond, Pol. Hist, of N. Y., II., 149; McMaster, United 
States, v., 64; Life of W. W. Seaton, 173; Annals of Cong., 18 
Cong., I Sess., I., 358. ^ Clay, Private Corresp., 87. 

^ Parton, Jackson, II., 357, III., 20; Monroe, Writings. 

< Gallatin, Works, II., 297-300; Adams, Life of Gallatin, 604; 
Clay, Private Corresp., 100-103; Sargent, Public Men and 
Events, I., 57. 



1824] PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 255 

The conflict was not entirely a matter of personal 
politics. Jackson had raised the popular movement 
against the congressional caucus into a distinct issue 
— the right of the people to choose their own presi- 
dent. Clay's "American system" of internal im- 
provements and the protective tariff furnished others. 
We have seen that these subjects were hotly debated 
in Congress during the spring months of 1824. As 
the pre-eminent champion of these interests, Clay 
had a large following in the states of the Ohio Val- 
ley, as well as in New York The early popularity of 
Calhoun in Pennsylvania was also due, in part, to 
his record as a friend of tariff and internal improve- 
ments. Upon that subject, on July 3, 1824, he gave 
an exposition of his constitutional principles to Gar- 
nett, of Virginia, in which he showed some tendency 
to moderate his position.* When interrogated upon 
his views in respect to the tariff, Jackson replied, in 
a letter to Coleman, avowing himself a moderate 
protectionist and a supporter of the doctrine of the 
promotion of manufactures in order to create a home 
market ; and in the Senate he voted for the tariff of 
1824, and in favor of internal improvements.^ Craw- 
ford was embarrassed by the need of reconciling his 
southern support with his following in the middle 
states upon these subjects. While his treasury re- 
ports indicated a preference for a revenue tariff, they 

' Houston, Nullification in S. C, 143. 

^Parton, Jackson, III., 34, 35; Niks' Register, XXVI., 245; 
Wheeler, Hist, of Cong., II., 231. 

VOL. XIV. — 18 



256 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1824 

were sufficiently ambiguous to create opposition in 
the south and a loss of support in the north. The 
issue of internal improvements he evaded by profess- 
ing himself in favor of a constitutional amendment, 
for which he tried in vain to secure the support of 
his friends in the Georgia legislature.^ 

Adams announced that his policy with reference to 
the opposing interests of the country was ' ' concilia- 
tion, not collision''; but he declared that there was 
no constitutional question involved, either in the tar- 
iff or in internal improvements,^ and he was frankly 
in favor of the latter, while he professed himself sat- 
isfied with the tariff of 1824, as a reasonable compro- 
mise between the conflicting interests. If changed 
at all, he believed that the tariff should be reduced. 
An attempt was made to bring him into disrepute in 
the south for his negotiation of a convention in 1824 
with England for the international regulation of the 
slave-trade. This subject had been forced upon his 
reluctant attention early in his career as secretary 
of state. While he was willing to join in declaring 
that traffic piracy, he was very proud of his record 
as a steadfast opponent of the right of search in any 
form. It was too valuable political capital to be 
given up, even if he had not espoused the cause with 
all his energy. To all propositions, therefore, for 
conceding the right of search of suspected slavers, 

' King, Life and Corresp. of King, VI., 496, 500; Niks' Regis- 
ter, XXIV, 306; Gilmer, Sketches, 294. 

» Adams, Memoirs, VI., 353, 451; cf. 343. 



i824] PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 257 

Adams had turned a deaf ear, as he did to proposals 
of mixed courts to try cases of capture. But in the 
convention of 1824, declaring the slave-trade piracy 
under the law of nations, he had offered to concede 
the right of British vessels to cruise along out 
coasts to intercept slavers, and this clause the 
Senate struck out, whereupon England refused to 
ratify it.' 

On the whole, however, while candidates were 
forced to declare themselves on important ques- 
tions, and while there were distinct sectional group- 
ings in Congress, which revealed conflicting interests 
in economic policy, issues were not clearly drawn in 
this campaign. Indeed, it was difficult for any one 
of the candidates to stand on a clear-cut platform 
without losing some of the support essential to his 
success. " Could we hit upon a few great principles, 
and unite their support with that of Crawford," 
wrote his friend Cobb, shortly before the election, 
"we could succeed beyond doubt." ^ 

As the year 1824 drew towards its close, the heat 
of the struggle was transferred to New York. No- 
where was the revulsion of popular feeling against 
caucus control more clearly manifested than in that 
state. The feeling was aggravated by the fact that 
the Albany Regency, under Van Buren, stubbornly 



' Adams, Memoirs, VI., 321, 338, 345; Monroe, Writings, VII., 
22; King, Life and Corresp. of King, 571, 572; DuBois, Slave 
Trade, 139, 140. 

'Cobb, Leisure Labors, 216; Shepard, Van Buren, 92. 



258 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1824 

refused to concede the popular demand for the repeal 
of the state law for choice of presidential electors by 
the legislature. The political machine's control of 
the legislature insured New York's vote to Crawford ; 
but if the choice were confided to the people, no one 
could predict the result. Out of these conditions a 
new combination sprang up in New York, which took 
the name of the "People's party," and sought not 
only to transfer the choice of electors to the people, 
but to overturn the Albany Regency. So rapidly 
did the discordant elements of New York Clintonians 
and anti-Clintonians combine in this party, that 
Crawford's managers, in an effort to break the com- 
bination, introduced a resolution in the legislature 
removing DeWitt Clinton from his office of canal 
commissioner. The purpose was to split the Peo- 
ple's party by compelling its members to revive their 
old antagonisms by taking sides for or against Clin- 
ton. Although the resolution was carried by a 
decisive majority, the indignity placed upon the 
champion of the Erie Canal aroused popular resent- 
ment and increased the revolt against the Regency. 
In September, 1824, the People's party met in a 
state convention at Utica and nominated Clinton for 
governor.* 

While this campaign (which resulted in an over- 

1 On the New York campaign, see Rammelkamp, Am, Hist. 
Assoc, Report 1904, p. 177; Hammond, Pol, Hist, of N. Y., II., 
chaps, xxix.-xxxii.; Weed, Autobiography, chap, xv.; McMaster, 
United States, V., 71-73. 



i824] PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 259 

whelming victory for the People's party) was in 
progress, the legislature met to choose electors. So 
clearly marked was the trend of public opinion that 
many members broke away from their allegiance to 
Crawford. The Senate nominated electors favor- 
able to him, but in the Assembly the Adams men 
predominated, although they were not in a majority. 
After several days of deadlock, a combination ticket, 
made up of Adams electors and certain Clay men 
who had been named on the Senate's ticket, was 
suddenly presented to the Assembly and passed, with 
the aid of Crawford men, who thought that if the 
matter could be brought to a joint ballot they could 
then win and exclude Clay from the contest. But 
the Adams men had conciliated the supporters of 
Clay by guaranteeing to them five electoral votes, 
which were expected, if the ultimate choice of the 
president should come to the House of Representa- 
tives, to make Clay one of the three candidates be- 
fore that body.^ The Clay following, therefore, sup- 
ported the Adams ticket on the joint ballot, with the 
result that Adams secured 25 electors. Clay 7, and 
Crawford 4. When the electoral college met in 
December, Clay lost three of his votes, so that 
New York finally gave 26 to Adams, 5 to Crawford, 
4 to Clay, and i to Jackson. Thus the Adams 
men had failed to carry out their agreement with 

' Clay, Private Corresp., 99, 104, 106; National Intelligencer, 
September 15, 1824; Van Buren to Crawford, November 17, 
1824; Van Buren Papers (Cong. Libr.). 



26o RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1824 

the followers of Clay; had not these three Clay 
votes been withdrawn he would have tied Crawford 
for third place, Louisiana, although New York's 
electoral college voted in ignorance of the fact, had 
already deserted Clay/ The choice of electors in 
Louisiana was made by the legislature, in the ab- 
sence of several Clay men, and the combined Jack- 
son and Adams ticket received a majority of only 
two votes over Clay.' Thus vanished the latter's 
hopes of becoming one of the three candidates to be 
voted on by the House of Representatives. 

In the country as a whole, Jackson received 
99 electoral votes, Adams 84, Crawford 41, and Clay 
37. For the vice-presidency, Calhoun was chosen 
by a vote of 182, while Sanford, of New York, 
received the vote of Ohio, together with a portion 
of that of Kentucky and New York ; Virginia voted 
for Macon, of North Carolina ; Georgia for Van 
Buren ; and scattering votes were given for Jackson 
and Clay. No presidential candidate had a ma- 
jority, and, in accordance with the Constitution, the 
House of Representatives was to decide between the 
three highest candidates. 

To Clay, powerful in Congress, fell the bitter 
honor of deciding between his rivals. Jackson had 
a decisive plurality of the electoral vote, and even 

^ N. Y. American, December 3, 1824; iV. Y. Com. Adv., De- 
cember 14, 1824; Weed, Autobiography, 128, is in error; L. E. 
Aylsworth, Clay in Elec. of 1824 (MS. thesis). 

'Sargent, Public Men and Events, I., 67; Niles' Register, 
XXVII., 257; Adams, Memoirs, VI., 446. 



1825] PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 261 

the Kentucky legislature, under the dominance of 
the "relief party," urged the representatives from 
that state to cast their vote in his favor. ^ But 
although Jackson was popular in the west. Clay 
had long been hostile to the candidacy of this mili- 
tary chieftain, and could not well alter his opinion. 
Moreover, Clay's presidential ambitions stood in 
the way of this choice. It would not have been 
easy for him to become Jackson's successor, both 
because of the difficulty of electing two successive 
candidates from the west and because Calhoun 
had already anticipated him in the alliance. With 
Crawford, he was on better terms; but that candi- 
date was clearly in the minority, his health was 
gravely impaired, and his following was made up 
largely of the opponents of the policies which Clay 
represented.' 

He determined, therefore, to use his Influence in 
behalf of Adams — the rival who had borne away 
from him the secretaryship of state and whose for- 
eign policy had been the target of his most persist- 
ent attacks. On the other hand, the recognition of 
the Spanish-American republics and the announce- 
ment of the Monroe Doctrine had made Adams in 
a sense the heir of Clay's own foreign policy, and, 
in the matter of tariff and internal improvements, 
Adams was far more in accord with him than was 
Crawford. 

* Adams, Memoirs, VI., 446. 

» Ibid.. VII.. 4; Niles' Register, XXVII., 386. 



262 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1825 

As the day approached on which the House was 
to make its choice, friends of Clay, including his 
"messmate," Letcher, of Kentucky, sought Adams 
to convey to him the friendly attitude of Clay and 
their hope that their chieftain might serve himself 
by supporting Adams. ^ They made it perfectly 
clear that by this they intended to suggest for Clay 
a membership in his cabinet. Without giving ex- 
plicit promises, Adams made it equally clear to these 
visitors that, if he were chosen by the votes of west- 
ern delegations, he should naturally look to the west 
for much of the support that he should need. In 
short, Adams's diary, like a book of judgment, shows 
that he walked perilously, if safely, along the edge 
of his conscience at this time. "Incedo super ignes" ^ 
he wrote — "I walk over fires." But his diary re- 
cords no vulgar bargaining with Clay, although he 
talked over with him the general principles which he 
would follow in his administration. 

The adhesion of Clay by no means assured Adams's 
election: the result was not fully certain until the 
actual vote was given. Missouri and Illinois were 
long in doubt, ^ and in the case of both of these 
states the vote was cast by a single person. Cook, 
of Illinois, was a personal friend of Adams, and, al- 
though the plurality of the electoral vote of that 
state had been in favor of Jackson, Cook, giving a 
strained interpretation of his pre-election promises to 

» Adams, Memoirs, VI., 447, 457, 473-475. 
2 Ibid., 453. * Ibid., 469. 



1825] PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 263 

follow the will of his constituency, cast his vote in 
favor of Adams.* With Scott, of Missouri, Adams 
made his peace in an interview wherein he gave him 
assurances with respect to newspaper patronage and 
the retention of his brother, a judge in Arkansas ter- 
ritory, who was threatened with the loss of his office 
because he had killed his colleague in a duel. He 
also secured the vote of Louisiana, by the one dele- 
gate who held the balance of power; and he won 
the Maryland member who had its decisive vote, by 
the statement given through Webster, that his ad- 
ministration would not proscribe the Federalists.^ 
Friends of all the other candidates were busy in 
proposing combinations and making promises which 
cannot be traced to their principals.' 

When the vote was taken, Adams was found to 
have thirteen states, Jackson seven, and Crawford 
four."* Adams controlled New England, New York, 
and the Ohio Valley, with the exception of Indiana, to- 
gether with Maryland, Missouri, and Louisiana. The 
grouping of the Jackson vote showed a union of the 
states of Pennsylvania and New Jersey with South 
Carolina, Tennessee, and the cotton states of the 
southwest. The Crawford territory included Geor- 
gia, North Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware. Van 

* Adams, Memoirs, VI., 443, 473, 476, 495; Edwards, Illinois, 
261-265. 

^ Adams, Memoirs, YI., 4g2, 4gg; Webster, Writings (National 
ed.), XVII., 378. 

^ Adams, Memoirs, VI., 476, 495, 513; Clay, Private Corresp., 
109, iii; Parton, Jackson, III., 56. ■* See map. 



264 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1825 

Buren had received the electoral vote of Georgia for 
the vice-presidency, and he still exercised a powerful 
influence in New York, Adams had to face, there- 
fore, the possibility of a union between two of the 
ablest politicians in the nation, Calhoun and Van 
Buren, both of whom saw that their political fort- 
unes were involved in the triumph of Andrew Jack- 
son; and Jackson's popularity was extraordinary 
even in the western states which voted for Adams. 
Even as he saw victory approaching, the New Eng- 
land leader was filled with gloomy forebodings over 
the prospects. "They are flattering for the imme- 
diate issue," he recorded in his diary, "but the 
fearful condition of them is that success would open 
to a far severer trial than defeat." 



CHAPTER XVI 

PRESIDENT ADAMS AND THE OPPOSITION 

(1825-1827) 

FOR eight years President Monroe had adminis- 
tered the executive department of the federal 
government — years that have been called the " Era 
of Good Feeling." The reader who has followed the 
evidences of factional controversy among the rival 
presidential candidates in the cabinet, and noted the 
wide-spread distress following the panic of 181 9, the 
growing sectional jealousies, the first skirmishes in 
the slavery struggle, and the clamor of a democracy 
eager to assert its control and profoundly distrustful 
of the reigning political powers, will question the 
reality of this good feeling. On the other hand, in 
spite of temporary reverses, the nation as a whole 
was bounding with vigor in these years of peace after 
war ; and if in truth party was not dead, and a golden 
age had not yet been given to the American people, 
at least the heat of formal party contest had been for 
a time allayed. The bitterness of political warfare 
in the four years which we are next to consider might 
well make the administration of the last of the Vir- 
ginia dynasty seem peaceful and happy by contrast. 



266 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1825 

Monroe's presidential career descended to a close 
in a mellow sunset of personal approval, despite the 
angry clouds that gathered on the horizon. He had 
grown in wisdom by his experiences, and, although 
not a genius, he had shown himself able, by patient 
and dispassionate investigation, to reach judgments 
of greater value than those of more brilliant but less 
safe statesmen. Candor, fair-mindedness, and mag- 
nanimity were attributed to him even by those who 
were engaged in bitter rivalry for the office which he 
now laid down. He was not rapid or inflexible in his 
decisions between the conflicting views of his official 
family; but in the last resort he chose between 
policies, accepted responsibility, and steered the ship 
of state between the shoals and reefs that underlay 
the apparently placid sea of the " Era of Good Feel- 
ing." How useful were his services in these tran- 
sitional years appeared as soon as John Quincy 
Adams grasped, with incautious hands, the helm 
which Monroe relinquished.^ 

" Less possessed of your confidence in advance 
than any of my predecessors," wTote President 
Adams, in his first annual message, "I am deeply 
conscious of the prospect that I shall stand more 
and oftener in need of your indulgence." In his 
reply to the notification of his election by the House, 
after adverting to the fact that one of his competitors 

* On Monroe's personal traits, see Adams, Memoirs, IV., 240 
et passim; J. Q. Adams, Eulogy on the Life and Character of 
Janies Monroe; Schouler, United States, IV., 201-207. 



1825] OPPOSITION TO ADAMS 267 

had received a larger minority of the electoral vote 
than his own, he declared that, if his refusal of the 
office would enable the people authoritatively to ex- 
press their choice, he should not hesitate to decline ; * 
he believed that perhaps two-thirds of the people 
were adverse to the result of the election.^ 

In truth, the position of the new president was a 
delicate one, and he was destined neither to obtain 
the indulgence asked nor the popular ratification 
which he craved. By receiving his office from the 
hands of the House of Representatives in competi- 
tion with a candidate who had a larger electoral vote, 
he fell heir to the popular opposition which had been 
aroused against congressional intrigue, and especially 
against the selection of the president by the congres- 
sional caucus. More than this, it was charged that 
Clay's support was the result of a corrupt bargain, 
by which the Kentucky leader was promised the 
office of secretary of state. This accusation was first 
publicly made by an obscure Pennsylvania member, 
George Kremer, who, in an unsigned communication 
to a newspaper, when Clay's decision to vote for 
Adams was first given out, reported that overtures 
were said to have been made by the friends of Adams 
^o the friends of Clay, offering him the appointment 
of secretary of state for his aid to elect Adams ; and 
ihat the friends of Clay gave this information to the 
friends of Jackson, hinting that for the same price 

' Richardson, Messages and Papers, II., 293. 
' Adams, Memoirs, VII., 98; cf. ibid., VI., 481. 



268 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1825 

they would close with the Tennesseean. When these 
overtures, said the writer, were rejected, Clay trans- 
ferred his interest to Adams.* 

Stung to the quick. Clay rushed into print with 
a denunciation of the writer as a dastard and a liar, 
and held him responsible to the laws which govern 
men of honor. ^ In reply to this evident invitation to 
a duel, Kremer avowed his authorship and his readi- 
ness to prove his charges. If Clay had known the 
identity of his traducer, he would hardly have sum- 
moned him to the field of honor, for Kremer was a 
well-meaning but credulous and thick-headed rustic 
noted solely for his leopard -skin overcoat. The 
speaker, therefore, abandoned his first idea, and 
asked of the House an investigation of the charges, 
which Kremer reiterated his readiness to prove. 
But when the investigating committee was ready to 
take testimony, the Pennsylvania congressman re- 
fused to appear. He was, in fact, the tool of Jack- 
son's managers, who greatly preferred to let the 
scandal go unprobed by Congress. If Clay trans- 
ferred his following to Adams, the charge would gain 
credence with the masses ; if he were not made sec- 
retary of state, it would be alleged that honest 
George Kremer had exposed the bargain and pre- 
vented its consummation. In vain, in two successive 
and elaborate addresses,' did Clay marshal evidence 

« Niles' Register, XXVII., 353. * Ibid., 355. 

' Address of 1825 and of 1827, in Clay, Works (Colton's ed.), 
v., 299, 34r. 



1825] OPPOSITION TO ADAMb 269 

that, before he left Kentucky, he had determined to 
vote for Adams in preference to Crawford or Jack- 
son, and that there was no proof of Kremer's charge.* 
In vain was evidence produced to show that friends 
of Jackson^ and Crawford' solicited Clay's support 
by even more unblushing offers of political reward 
than those alleged against Adams. To the end of 
his career, the charge remained a stumbling-block 
to Clay's ambitions, and the more he denounced and 
summoned witnesses^ the more the scandal did its 
poisonous work. 

After all, it was Adams who gave the charge im- 
mortality. Even if he had appreciated the power 
of public feeling he would not have hesitated. If 
the accusation was a challenge to the spirited Ken- 
tuckian, it was a call to duty to the Puritan. Two 
days after his election, Adams, asking Monroe's ad- 
vice about the composition of the cabinet, announced 
that he had already determined to appoint Clay 
secretary of state, "considering it due," said he, "to 
his talents and services to the western section of the 
Union, whence he comes, and to the confidence in 
me manifested by their delegations." ^ Clay spoke 
lightly of the threatened opposition as a mere tem- 

* Clay, Address to the Public (1827), 52; ibid., Works (Colton's 
ed.). IV., log; Adams, Memoirs, VII., 4. 

^ Clay, Works (Colton's ed.), I., chaps, xvi., xvii. ; Parton, 
Jackson, III., 56, 110-116. 

'Adams, Memoirs, VI., 464, 513, VII., 91. 

* See, for example, testimony of congressmen, Niles' Register, 
XXVIII., 69, 133, 134, 203; Address of David Trimble (1828). 

* Adams, Memoirs, VI., 508. 



27© RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1825 

porary ebullition of disappointment at the issue of 
the election/ and after a short interval accepted 
the appointment.^ 

Up to this time Jackson had kept his temper re- 
markably; but now that Adams had called to the 
department of state the man who made him presi- 
dent, the man who justified his choice by the state- 
ment that Jackson was a "military chieftain," the 
great deep of his wrath was stirred. Clay seemed to 
him the "Judas of the West," and he wrote a letter, 
probably for publication, passionately defending the 
disinterestedness of his military services, calling at- 
tention to the fact that Clay had never yet risked 
himself for his country, and soothing himself in de- 
feat by this consolation: " No midnight taper burnt 
by me; no secret conclaves were held; no cabals 
entered into to persuade any one to a violation of 
pledges given or of instructions received. By me no 
plans were concerted to impair the pure principles 
of our republican institutions, nor to prostrate that 
fundamental maxim, which maintains the supremacy 
of the people's will." ^ 

On his way back to Tennessee, he spread broad- 
cast in conversation his conviction that "honest 
George Kremer ' ' had exposed a corrupt bargain be- 
tween Clay and Adams,"* and to this belief he stuck 



' Adams, Memoirs, VI., 509. 

^ For his reasons, see Clay, Works (Colton's ed.), IV., 114, 192. 
' Niles' Register, XXVIII., 20; Parton, Jackson, III., 77. 
* Parton, Jackson, III., 107. 



1825] OPPOSITION TO ADAMS 271 

through the rest of his Hfe, appealing, when his wit- 
nesses failed him, to the stubborn fact of Clay's ap- 
pointment/ In October, 1825, Tennessee renomi- 
nated Jackson, who accepted, and resigned his seat 
in the Senate, accompanying his action with a plea 
for a constitutional amendment rendering congress- 
men ineligible to office during their term of service 
and for two years thereafter, except in cases of judi- 
cial appointment. The purpose was evidently to 
wage a new campaign to give effect to " the will of 
the people." ^ 

Although he realized that an organized opposition 
would be formed, Adams sought to give a non-parti- 
san character to his administration.^ In spite of the 
low opinion expressed in his diary for the honesty 
and political rectitude of the secretary of the treas- 
ury, he asked him to retain his office, but Crawford 
refused.^ Ascertaining that Gallatin would also de- 
cline the place, ^ he appointed Richard Rush, of Penn- 
sylvania, then serving as minister to England. 
Jackson's friends made it clear that he would take 
unkindly the offer of the department of war, and 
Adams gave that office to James Barbour, of Vir- 
ginia.* He retained Southard, of New Jersey, as 
secretary of the navy, William Wirt, of Virginia, as 

' Parton, Jackson, III., 110-116. 

Ubid., III., 95; Miles' Register, XXIX., 155. 

' Richardson, Messages and Papers, II., 295-297. 

* Adams, Alemoirs, VI., 506, 508. 

^ Ibid., Life of Gallatin, 607; Gallatin, Writings, II., 301. 

' Adams, Memoirs, VI., 510; cf. ibid., 450. 

VOL. XIV. — 19 



272 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1825 

attorney-general, and McLean, of Ohio, as postmas- 
ter-general. The latter selection proved peculiarly 
unfortunate, since it gave the influence and the pat- 
ronage of the post-office to the friends of Jackson. 
For the mission to England, he first selected Clinton, 
and after his refusal he persuaded Rufus King to 
take the post.^ Since King's acceptance of the sena- 
torship at the hands of the Van Buren element in 
New York, he had been less a representative of the 
Federalists than in his earlier days ; but the appoint- 
ment met in some measure the obligations which 
Adams owed to supporters in that party. 

Far from organizing party machinery and using 
the federal office-holders as a political engine, he 
rigidly refused to introduce rotation in office at the 
expiration of the term of the incumbent — a princi- 
ple which " would make the Government a perpetual 
and unintermitting scramble for office." ^ He deter- 
mined to renominate every person against whom 
there was no complaint which would have warranted 
his removal. By this choice he not only retained 
many outworn and superfluous officers and thus fos- 
tered a bureaucratic feeling,^ but he also furnished 
to his enemies local managers of the opposition, for 
these office-holders were, in general, appointees of 
Crawford, in his own interest, or of McLean, in the 
interest of Calhoun and Jackson. 

So rigidly did Adams interpret his duty in the mat- 

' Adams, Memoirs, VI., 523. ^ Ibid., 521. 

' Fish, Civil Service, 76-78. 



1825J OPPOSITION TO ADAxMS 273 

ter that only twelve removals altogether were made 
during his term.' He even retained the surveyor 
of the port of Philadelphia, whose negligence had 
occasioned the loss of large sums of money to the 
government and whose subordinates were hostile to 
Adams. Under such conditions, the friends of the 
administration had to contend not only against their 
enemies, but against the Adams administration it- 
self, which left its power in the hands of its enemies 
to be wielded against its friends.^ Binns, the editor 
of one of the leading administration papers, in an 
interview was informed that the president did not 
intend to make any removals. " I bowed respect- 
fully," said the editor, "assuring the president that 
I had no doubt the consequence would be that he 
himself would be removed so soon as the term for 
which he had been elected had expired. This inti- 
mation gave the president no concern." ^ 

Another illustration of his tenacity in this matter, 
even in opposition to the wishes of Henry Clay, was 
his refusal to remove a naval officer at New Orleans 
who had made preparations for a public demonstra- 
tion to insult a member of Congress who had assisted 
in electing Adams. Clay believed that the adminis- 
tration " should avoid, on the one hand, political 
persecution, and, on the other, an appearance of 
pusillanimity. ' ' But the president refused to remove 

' Fish, Civil Service, 72. 

^ Adams, Memoirs, VII., 163. 

' Parton, Jackson, III., 92; Adams, Memoirs, VII., 154. 



274 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1825 

a man for an intention not carried into effect, and 
particularly because he could frame no general pol- 
icy applicable to this case which would not result 
in a clean sweep. Four-fifths of the custom officers 
throughout the Union, he thought, were opposed to 
his election. To depart in one case from the rule 
which he had laid down against removals would be 
to expose himself to demands from all parts of the 
country.^ 

The president who rejected these favorite instru- 
ments of political success was unable to find compen- 
sation in personal popularity or the graces of manner. 
Cold and repellent, he leaned backward in his desire 
to do the right, and alienated men by his testy and 
uncompromising reception of advances. And yet 
there never was a president more in need of con- 
ciliating, for already the forces of the opposition 
were forming. Even before his election he had 
been warned that the price of his victory would 
be an organized opposition to the measures of the 
administration,^ and that Calhoun and his friends 
in South Carolina and Pennsylvania would be the 
leaders.' 

The union of the opposition forces into a party was 
perfected slowly, for between Crawford, Jackson, and 
Calhoun there had been sharp rivalry. Virginia by 



* Adams, Memoirs, VI., 546. 
*Ibid., 476, 481, 495, 506, 510. 

' Am. Hist. Assoc, Report 1899, II., 230, 231; Calhoun, Works, 
III., 51; Sargent, Public Men and Events^ I.. 106. log. 



1825] OPPOSITION TO ADAMS 275 

no means relished the idea of the promotion of the 
military hero ; and in New York Jackson had been 
sustained by Clinton in 1824 against Crawford, the 
candidate of Van Buren. The Senate ratification of 
the nomination of Clay (March 7, 1825) foreshad- 
owed the alliance of southern interests with those 
of Pennsylvania;^ but only fourteen votes, including 
that of Jackson, were mustered against him, while 
among the twenty-seven who ratified the nomination 
was Van Buren. By the opening of the nineteenth 
Congress, in December, 1825, however, the situation 
might well have convinced Adams of the need of 
caution. Taylor, the administration candidate for 
speaker, was elected by a majority of only five 
against his opponents' combined vote, and, in the 
Senate, Calhoun appointed committees unfriendly to 
the president. 

Nevertheless, in his first annual message ^ Adams 
challenged his critics by avowing the boldest doc- 
trines of loose construction. The tide of sentiment 
in favor of internal improvements was so strong^ 
that, to insure its complete success, it would have 
been necessary only for the executive to cease to 
interpose the checks which Monroe had placed 
upon this movement. Prudence would have dic- 
tated to a president anxious to enlarge his follow- 
ing the avoidance of irritating utterances upon this 

' Adams, Memoirs, VI., 525, VII., 69. 

* Richardson, Messages and Papers, II., 299. 

'Jefferson, Writings (Ford's ed.), X., 348. 



276 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1824 

point. But Adams characteristically threw away 
his opportunity, choosing rather to make extreme 
proposals which he realized had slight chance of 
success, and to state broad principles of national 
power. 

In this respect he went even further than Clay ap- 
proved.* Defining the object of civil government as 
the improvement of the condition of those over whom 
it is established, not only did he urge the construc- 
tion of roads and canals, but, in his enlarged view of 
internal improvements, he included the establish- 
ment of a national university, the support of obser- 
vatories, " light-houses of the skies," and the explora- 
tion of the interior of the United States and of the 
northwest coast. Appealing to the example of Euro- 
pean nations, as well as of various states of the Union, 
he urged Congress to pass laws for the promotion of 
agriculture, commerce, and manufactures, the "en- 
couragement of the mechanic and of the elegant arts, 
the advancement of literature, and the progress of 
the sciences, ornamental and profound." "Were 
we," he asked, "to slumber in indolence or fold up 
our arms and proclaim to the world that we are 
palsied by the will of our constituents, would it not 
be to cast away the bounties of Providence and doom 
ourselves to perpetual inferiority?" Such a profes- 
sion of faith as this sounded strangely in the ears of 
Americans, respectful of their constituents and accus- 
tomed to regard government as a necessary evil. At 

' Adams, Memoirs, VII., 59, 61-63. 



1825] OPPOSITION TO ADAMS 277 

a stroke, Adams had destroyed his fair prospects of 
winning the support of Virginia, and, what is more, 
he had aroused the fears of the whole slave-holding 
section. 

At the beginning of 1824 the legislature of Ohio 
passed a resolution in favor of the emancipation and 
colonization of the adult children of slaves, and was 
supported by the legislatures of at least six northern 
states, including Pennsylvania, while the proposal 
was attacked by all the states of the lower south/ 
This followed soon after the excitement aroused by 
an attempted negro insurrection in Charleston,^ in 
1822, and from the fears aroused by this plot the 
south had not yet recovered. Already Governor 
Wilson, of South Carolina, was sounding the alarm 
in a message ' denouncing the Ohio proposition, and 
declaring that there would be more " glory in form- 
ing a rampart with our bodies on the confines of our 
territory than to be the victims of a successful rebel- 
lion or the slaves of a great consolidated govern- 
ment." Governor Troup, of Georgia, stirred by 
the same proposition, and especially by a resolution 
which Senator King, of New York, submitted (Feb- 
ruary 18, 1825) for the use of the funds arising from 
the public lands to aid in emancipating and removing 
the slaves, warned his constituents that very soon 

* Ames, State Docs, on Federal Relations, No. 5, p. 11 (with ci- 
tations) ; McMaster, United States, V., 204. 

' McMaster, United States, V., 199; Atlantic Monthly, VII., 728. 

' December i, 1824. Ames, State Docs, on Federal Relations. 
No. 5, p. 13; Niles' Register, XXVII., 263, 292. 



278 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1825 

" the United States government, discarding the mask, 
will openly lend itself to a combination of fanatics for 
the destruction of everything valuable in the south- 
ern country " ; and he entreated the legislature, " hav- 
ing exhausted the argument, to stand by its arms." ^ 
While Georgia was in this frame of mind, the admin- 
istration, as we shall see,^ completed the breach by 
refusing to permit the survey of the Indian lands by 
the state, and thus forced the followers of Crawford 
in Georgia to unite with their former opponents in 
South Carolina. 

Even in North Carolina, where there had been a 
considerable sentiment in favor of Adams, ^ the con- 
viction grew strong that, under such a loose con- 
struction of the Constitution as that which his mes- 
sage advocated, the abolition of slavery might be 
effected. The venerable Senator Macon, to whom 
Adams had at one time looked as a possible candi- 
date for the vice-presidency, believed that the spirit 
of emancipation was stronger than that for internal 
improvements; and that the president's loose-con- 
struction doctrine would render it possible for Con- 
gress to free every slave. ^ One of the senators of 
South Carolina, desirous of supporting the adminis- 
tration in opposition to the Calhoun faction, begged 
Adams to include in his message some passage reas- 

* Ames, State Docs, on Federal Relations, No. 5, p. 17; House 
Exec. Docs., 19 Cong., 2 Sess., IV., No. 59, pp. 69, 70. 

* Chap, xviii., below. 

' Univ. of North Carolina, James Sprunt Hist. Alonographs, 
No. 2, pp. 79, 88, 106. * Ibid., 76, 106, 10;. 



i826] OPPOSITION TO ADAMS 279 

suring the south in the matter of slavery, but he 
received a chilHng reply. ^ The speaker, Taylor, al- 
ready obnoxious because of his previous champion- 
ship of the proposed exclusion of slavery from 
Missouri, aroused the wrath of the south by present- 
ing to the House a memorial from a " crazy French- 
man," who invited Congress to destroy all the states 
which should refuse to free their slaves.^ In short, 
there was a wide-spread though absolutely unfound- 
ed fear that the administration favored emancipa- 
tion, and that the doctrines avowed in the message 
of the president gave full constitutional pretext for 
such action. 

On the other hand, the opposition was in no agree- 
ment on principles.^ It was dangerous for the south 
to marshal its forces on an issue which might alien- 
ate the support of Pennsylvania. Much more safely 
could the enemies of the president press the charge 
that the favorite of the people had been deprived of 
his rights by a corrupt political intrigue. Conse- 
quently, a flood of proposed amendments to the 
Constitution poured upon both branches of Congress 
day after day, demanding the abolition of the choice 
of president by the House of Representatives and 
the exclusion of members of Congress from appoint- 
ment to executive office during their term of service* 

' Adams, Memoirs, VII., 57. ^Ibid., 103. 

' Univ. of North Carolina, James Sprunt Hist. Monographs, 
No. 2, p. 79. 

* Ames, Amendments to the Const., in Am. Hist. Assoc, Report 
1896, II., 21, 106, 339, 343. 



28o RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1825 

These measures were championed by McDuffie, Ben- 
ton, and other friends of Calhoun and Jackson. Al- 
though they were undoubtedly called out in part by 
a sincere desire to effect a change in a system which 
was regarded as dangerous, they also served admira- 
bly the purpose of popular agitation. In pursuance 
of the same policy, a report proposing restrictions 
upon the executive patronage was made in the Sen- 
ate (1826) by a committee which included Benton 
and Van Buren. This was accompanied by six bills, 
transferring a large share of the patronage from the 
president to the congressmen, and proposing the re- 
peal of the four -year tenure of office act.^ Six 
thousand copies of this report were printed for dis- 
tribution, and the Puritan president, so scrupulous 
in the matter of the civil service that he disgusted 
his own followers, found himself bitterly attacked 
throughout the country as a corrupt manipulator of 
patronage. 

The first fully organized opposition, however, was 
effected in the debates over Adams's proposal to 
send delegates to the Panama Congress, for here was 
a topic that permitted combined attack under many 
flags. In the spring of 1825 the ministers of Mexico 
and Colombia sounded Clay to ascertain whether 
the United States would welcome an invitation to 
a congress^ initiated by Bolivar, with the design of 

• Fish, Civil Service, 73; McMaster, United States, V., 432. 

* Adams, M^wotV^, VI., 531, 536, 542; International Am. Con- 
ference, Reports, etc., IV., "The Congress of 1826 at Panama," 23. 



1826] OPPOSITION TO ADAMS 281 

consolidating the Spanish-American policy, though 
at first the United States had not been included 
among the states invited,* Clay was predisposed to 
accept the overture, for he saw in the congress an 
opportunity to complete the American system, which 
he had long advocated and which appealed strongly 
to his idealistic view of the destiny of the new repub- 
lics.^ But Adams was sceptical of the future of these 
new nations, and, as for an American system, he had 
once (1820) declared that we had one already, "we 
constituted the whole of it ; there is no community of 
interests or of principles between North and South 
A.merica." ' 

Adams had learned something from Clay in the 
mean time, however, and his own share in announc- 
ing the Monroe Doctrine inclined him to favor the 
idea of such a congress, under careful restrictions, to 
safeguard our neutrality and independence. So the 
inquiries were met in a friendly spirit, and formal 
invitations were received from Mexico, Colombia, and 
Central America in the fall of 1825, defining more 
clearly the purposes of the congress and the mode of 
procedure.** The explanations still left much to be 
desired, and it may be doubted whether the presi- 
dent would have accepted the invitation had not 
Clay's zeal influenced his decision. 



' International Am. Conference, Reports, etc., IV., " The Con- 
gress of 1826 at Panama," 155. * See chap, xi., above. 
3 Adams, Memoirs, V., 176; cf. Am. Hist. Rev., XII., 113. 
* International Am. Conference, Report, IV., 24-34. 



282 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1825 

As its proceedings finally showed, the real purpose 
of the congress was to form a close union of the new 
republics against Spain or other nations which might 
attack them or make colonial settlements in viola- 
tion of their territory, and to determine the troops 
and funds to be contributed by each state for this 
end. Its general assembly was to meet every two 
years, and, during the war, its members were to be 
bound by the action of the majority/ Such an or- 
ganization was manifestly dangerous to the pre- 
dominance of the United States, and participation 
in it was incompatible with our neutrality and inde- 
pendence. Having reason to apprehend that the 
congress might go to this extent, the president, in 
determining to accept the invitation, also determined 
so to limit our representatives that they should have 
no power to commit either our neutrality or our 
independent action, unless their action were ratified 
by the government. 

Nevertheless, the prospect of an American system 
from which the United States was excluded was not 
a pleasing one, and certain topics which were sug- 
gested for consideration made the situation really 
critical. The presence of a large French fleet off the 
coast of Cuba, in the summer of 1825, revived the 
apprehension of an invasion of that island, and both 
Colombia and Mexico contemplated an attack upon 

* International Am. Conference, Report, IV., 169 (Bolivar's in- 
structions) ; 184 (Treaty of Confederation framed by the Panama 
Congress) . 



1825] OPPOSITION TO ADAMS 283 

this remaining stronghold of Spain. The annexa- 
tion of Cuba and Puerto Rico by any of the South 
American republics would unquestionably have 
meant the emancipation of the slaves, and already 
the spectacle of the black republic of Haiti had 
brought uneasiness to the south. In this juncture 
the administration endeavored to persuade the South 
American republics to suspend their expedition, and 
made overtures for Russian influence to induce 
Spain to recognize the revolted republics and thus 
avoid the danger of loss of her remaining posses- 
sions. 

Adams sent a special message to the Senate (De- 
cember 26, 1825), nominating two delegates to the 
Panama Congress. He attempted to disarm the gath- 
ering opposition by declaring that, although the com- 
missioning of these delegates was regarded as within 
the rights of the executive, he desired the advice and 
consent of the Senate and the House of Representa- 
tives to the proposed mission. Among the topics 
named by Adams as suitable for discussion at the 
congress were the principles of maritime neutrality, 
and " an agreement between all of the parties repre- 
sented at the meeting that each will guard by its own 
means against the establishment of any future Euro- 
pean colony within its borders. ' ' This was a striking 
qualification of a portion of the Monroe Doctrine, 
and it indicates the anxiety of the executive not to 
commit the United States to any permanent defen- 
sive alliance of the American republics. Seeing their 



284 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1826 

opportunity, however, the opposition brought in a 
report strongly antagonizing the recommendation of 
this congress, on the ground that it involved a de- 
parture from our time-honored policy of avoiding 
entangling alliances, that the congress would really 
constitute a government, and that the topics of dis- 
cussion might better be handled by negotiation with 
the respective states. The opposition considered 
rather the purposes of the congress as contemplated 
by the South American promoters than the proposi- 
tions which the United States was willing to discuss 
in the purely consultative body which Adams and 
Clay had in mind. 

The knowledge, ignored in the executive message, 
that the congress proposed to deal with the problem 
of the slave-trade and of the destiny of Cuba, Puerto 
Rico, and Haiti, kindled southern indignation at the 
idea of submitting the subject of slavery to the dis- 
cussion of an international tribunal. In a notable 
speech, Hayne declared this an entirely " domestic 
question." " With respect to foreign Nations," said 
he, " the language of the United States ought to be, 
that it concerns the peace of our own political family, 
and therefore we cannot permit it to be touched; 
and in respect to the slave-holding States, the only 
safe and constitutional ground on which they can 
stand, is, that they will not permit it to be brought 
into question either by their sister States, or by the 
Federal Government." * " The peace of eleven States 
' Register of Debates, 19 Cong., i Sess.. TL, pt. i., 165. 



i826] OPPOSITION TO ADAMS 285 

in this Union," said Benton, "will not permit the 
fruits of a successful negro insurrection to be exhib- 
ited among them." * 

This southern resentment against the submission 
of the question of our connection with slavery and 
with the insurrectionary negro republics to the dis- 
cussion of a foreign tribunal, was combined with the 
opposition of northern men like Van Buren to engag- 
ing the United States in a system for the control of 
American affairs by a congress. Thus the enemies 
of the administration were brought into unison. 
Nevertheless, the Senate assented to the mission 
(March 14, 1826) by a vote of 24 to 19; and, after 
an animated debate, the House, by a vote of 134 to 
60, made the necessary appropriations. It was a 
barren victory, however, for one of the delegates died 
while on his way, and the other reached Panama 
after the Congress had adjourned. Although a sub- 
sequent session was to have been held at Tacubaya, 
near the city of Mexico, dissensions among the Span- 
ish-American states prevented its meeting.^ 

^Register of Debates, 19 Cong., i Sess., II., pt. i., 330. 
^Richardson, Messages and Papers, II., 329; International 
Am. Conference, Report, IV., 81, 113, 173-201. 



CHAPTER XVII 

INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS AND FOREIGN 

TRADE 

(1825-1829) 

WHAT Adams had nearest at heart in his admin- 
istration was the construction of a great sys- 
tem of roads and canals, irrespective of local inter- 
ests, for the nation as a whole/ To " exalt the valleys 
and lay low the mountains and the hills" appealed 
to his imagination. He hoped that the increased 
price of the public lands, arising from the improved 
means of communication, would in turn furnish a 
large and steadily increasing fund for national turn- 
pikes and canals. But the American people were 
not anxious for a system of scientific administration, 
either of the public domain or of internal improve- 
ments. Although Benton could not secure sufficient 
support to carry his measure for graduating the price 
of the public lands and donating those which found 
no purchasers at fifty cents an acre,^ he voiced, nev- 
ertheless, a very general antagonism to the manage- 
ment of the domain by the methods of the count- 

* Wheeler, Hist, of Cong., II., 154; Adams, Memoirs, Vll., 59, 
VIII., 444; cf. chap, xiii., above. ^ Meigs, Be-wion, 165-172. 



1833] TRANSPORTATION 287 

ing-house. Nor was the president able to control 
legislation on internal improvements. The report of 
the engineers appointed under the general survey act 
of 1824 provided for the development of the routes 
of national importance.* But local interests and the 
pressure of corporations eager to receive federal sub- 
scriptions to their stock quickly broke down the 
unity of the system. 

The Senate declined to take action on a resolu- 
tion introduced December 20, 1825, by Senator Van 
Buren, of New York, which denied Congress the 
power to make roads and canals within the respective 
states, and proposed a constitutional amendment for 
the grant of the power under limitations.^ Provision 
had been made in 1825 for extending the Cumberland 
Road from Wheeling to Zanesville, Ohio, and for sur- 
veys through the other states of the northwest to 
Missouri, and appropriations were annually made for 
the road, until by 1833 it was completed as far as 
Columbus, Ohio. Nevertheless, that highway was 
rapidly going to destruction, and a counter project, 
ultimately successful, was already initiated for re- 
linquishing the road to the states through which it 
passed.* 

^ State Papers, 18 Cong., 2 Sess., V., Doc. 83 (February 14, 
1825); ci.ibid., 19 Cong.. 2 Sess., II., Ex. Doc. No. 10 (December 
7, 1826). 

^Register of Debates, 19 Cong., i Sess., II., pt. i., 20; Ames, 
Amettdinents of tlte Fed. Const. (Am. Hist. Assoc, Report 1896), 
71, 261. 

' Young, Cumberland Road, chap, vii.; Hulbert, Historic High- 
ways, X. 

VOL. XIV. 20 



288 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1825 

Over two and a third million dollars was appro- 
priated for roads and harbors during the administra- 
tion of John Quincy Adams, as against about one 
million during the administrations of all of his pred- 
ecessors combined. Acting on the line of least 
constitutional resistance opened by Monroe, when 
he admitted the right of appropriation for internal 
improvements, though not the right of construction 
or jurisdiction, extensive appropriations were made 
for roads and canals and for harbors on the Great 
Lakes and the Atlantic. Far from accepting Ad- 
ams's ideal of a scientific general system irrespective 
of local or party interests, districts combined with 
one another for local favors, corporations eagerly 
sought subscriptions for their canal stock, and the 
rival political parties bid against each other for the 
support of states which asked federal aid for their 
roads and canals. 

By the middle of this administration the popular- 
ity of internal improvement appropriations seemed 
irresistible, although southern states raised their 
voices against it and complained bitterly that they 
were neglected. The example of the Erie Canal, 
which was open by 1825, seemed to furnish proof of 
the success that awaited state canal construction. 
States were learning that English capital was ready 
for investment in such undertakings and that Con- 
gress could donate lands and subscribe for stock. 

By acts of 1825 and 1826, Pennsylvania initiated 
its extensive state system of roads and canals to 



1835] TRANSPORTATION 289 

reach the Ohio, the central part of New York, and 
the Great Lakes/ The trunk line of this system 
united Philadelphia with Pittsburg by a horse rail- 
way to Columbia on the Susquehanna, thence by a 
canal along that river and its tributary, the Juniata, 
to HolHdaysburg, where stationary engines carried 
the freight over a series of inclined planes across the 
thirty-six miles of mountains, to reach the western 
section of the canal at Johnstown on the Conemaugh, 
and so by the Allegheny to Pittsburg, Sectional 
jealousies delayed the work, and piled up a debt in- 
curred partly for branch canals in various parts of 
the state; but by 1830 over four hundred miles of 
canal had been built in Pennsylvania and five hun- 
dred more projected. Not until 1835 was the trimk 
line between Philadelphia and Pittsburg fully in 
operation, however, and in the decade after 1822 the 
total expenditure for internal improvements in the 
state amounted to nearly twenty-six million dollars, 
of which over ten millions was contributed by indi- 
vidual subscription. But the steam railroad proved 
too strong a competitor, the state was plunged too 
deeply in debt, and it was not many years before the 
public works were sold, and the era of the corpora- 
tion opened. 

Meanwhile the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal project^ 



* Hulbert, Historic Highways, XIII., chap. iv. ; Worthington, 
Finances of Pennsylvania, 22. 

' Hulbert, Historic Highways, XIII., chap, iii,; Ward, Cltesa- 
peake and Ohio Canal {Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies, XVII.) 



290 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1823 

had gained great impetus under the efforts of those 
who wished to turn the tide of western commerce to 
the Potomac River. The innate difficulties of the 
task, even more than the opposition of Baltimore, 
rendered abortive the efforts of the Potomac Com- 
pany to make the river navigable above tide-water. 
But in 1823 public interest in Virginia and Mary- 
land was aroused by the plan of a great canal to 
run alongside of the Potomac to its upper streams, 
and thence to connect with the Monongahela or 
Youghiogheny in order to reach the Ohio. At a 
convention which met in Washington in the fall of 
1823, Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Colum- 
bia were largely represented by delegates enthusi- 
astic over this new highway to the west. Even 
Baltimore acquiesced in the undertaking after a pro- 
vision giving the right to tap the canal by a branch 
to that city, so that her western trade should not be 
diverted to the Potomac cities. 

By 1826 the company was duly chartered by Vir- 
ginia and Maryland; Pennsylvania's consent was 
also obtained; and the financiering of the enter- 
prise seemed feasible by joint subscription to the 
stock by Maryland, Virginia, the District of Colum- 
bia, and the federal government. Under the gen- 
eral survey act of 1824, the route was surveyed, 
including an extension to Lake Erie by way of a 
canal from the Ohio. But when, in 1826, the board 
of engineers published its estimate of the cost of the 
canal, it was seen that the larger plans were doomed, 



i828] TRANSPORTATION 291 

for the total cost was placed at over twenty-two 
million dollars. This was practically prohibitive, for 
the whole capital stock of the Chesapeake and Ohio 
Company was only six millions. Congress made a 
million-dollar subscription to the stock of the com- 
pany, but only the eastern section of the canal could 
be begun ; the completion of navigation between the 
coal-fields on the upper Ohio and Cumberland on the 
Potomac must be postponed. 

Baltimore's interest in the grand design of canal 
communication between that city and Pittsburg 
quickly disappeared. Nearer to the Ohio Valley 
than any other seaport, she had built turnpikes to 
connect with the national road, and thus shared with 
Philadelphia the western trade. But now New York 
and Pennsylvania were undertaking canal systems 
which were certain in the long run to destroy the 
advantages of Baltimore. In desperation, her far- 
sighted and courageous merchants inaugurated the 
plan of a railroad across the mountains to the Ohio, 
grasping the idea that as the canal had shown its 
superiority over the turnpike, so this new device 
would win the day over the canal. In 1827 and 1828 
charters for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad were 
granted by Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. 

At Washington, on July 4, 1828, President Adams 
stripped off his coat, amid the cheers of the crowd, 
and thrust the spade into the ground in signal of 
the beginning of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal; 
but on the same day a rival celebration was in 



292 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1825 

progress at Baltimore, where the venerable signer 
of the Declaration of Independence, Charles Car- 
roll of Carrollton, placed the foundation-stone to 
commemorate the commencement of the Baltimore 
and Ohio Railroad, first of the iron bonds between 
the east and the west. When Adams thus won the 
plaudits of the people for his evidence of ability to 
break the conventions of polite society and use a 
laborer's tool, it was perhaps the only time that he 
and democracy came into sympathetic touch. But 
he was aiding in a losing cause, for, though Carroll 
was a man of the past, destiny was working on the 
side of the movement which he represented. In the 
field of transportation, the initiative of individuals 
and of corporations during the next two generations 
proved superior to that of state or nation. 

In the mean time, Ohio, eager to take advantage 
of the competition of these rival routes from New 
York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, and 
wishing to develop the central region of the state, 
undertook in 1825 a state system of canals connect- 
ing the Ohio with Lake Erie.^ The Ohio Canal be- 
gan at Portsmouth and followed the valleys of the 
Scioto and the Cuyahoga to Cleveland, while another 
canal extended from Cincinnati along the Miami to 
Dayton. By branches connecting with the Penn- 
sylvania system, this net-work of water-ways was 
intended to give alternative outlets for the rapidly 

' Morris, Internal Improvement in Ohio (Am. Hist. Assoc, Pa- 
pers, III.) , 107 ; see also McClelland and Huntington, Ohio Canals. 



1832] TRANSPORTATION 293 

growing surplus of the state. Wheat which sold for 
from twenty-five to thirty-seven cents per bushel 
in central Ohio in 1825 brought double the amount 
in 1832 when the canal began to be effective; and 
it sold for a higher price a hundred miles west of 
Pittsburg than it did sixty miles to the east of that 
city, where water transportation was lacking.^ An 
example of the rivalry of the followers of Adams 
and of Jackson in conciliating western interests is 
furnished in the case of Ohio, just prior to the 
campaign of 1828, when each party in Congress 
persisted in supporting its own bill donating lands 
for the canals of that state. Owing to the fear of 
each that the other party would gain the credit of 
the measure, both bills were passed, and Ohio re- 
ceived double the amount originally asked.' It 
was small wonder that Indiana, Illinois, and other 
western states memorialized Congress for aid in their 
own plans for canals. 

The activity of the states, no longer waiting 
for the federal government to construct a national 
system; the rapidly growing demand for the relin- 
quishment of the national road to the states within 
which it lay; and the activity of corporations, all 
pointed to a new era in internal improvements. The 
states were ready to receive appropriations, but they 
preferred to build their own roads and dig their own 

' Quar. Jour, of Econ., XVII., 15; Dial, in Ohio Archaeological 
and Hist. Soc, Publications, XIII., 479. 
^ Benton, Abridgment, X., 197 n. 



294 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1815 

canals. The state and the corporation were replac- 
ing the national government as the controlling power 
in internal improvements, and Adams's conception of 
a national system of turnpikes and canals had failed. 

Nor was President Adams successful in carrying 
out a system of complete maritime reciprocity. 
After the War of 181 2, Great Britain and the United 
States agreed upon the abolition of discriminating 
duties on ships or products engaged in the trade be- 
tween the two countries ; ' but England reserved her 
right to exempt her American possessions from this 
reciprocity. By excluding the ships of the United 
States from the trade with the English West Indies, 
England denied a profitable avocation to American 
ship-owners; while, at the same time, the liberal 
arrangements of the United States permitted her 
vessels freely to enter the ports of this country with 
their cargoes of English manufactures, and to carry 
thence to the West Indies lumber, flour, and pro- 
visions to exchange for the molasses and sugar of 
the islands. 

This ability to make a triangular voyage, with 
profits on each transaction, gave such advantage to 
British ships that they were able to carry on the 
trade between the United States and England at a 
rate below that which American vessels could afford. 
Driven to seek some remedy, the Yankee merchants 
and skippers turned to the Orient. The trade with 

' Cf. Babcock, Am. Nationality {Am. Nation, XIII.), chap, 
xvi. 



i826] TRANSPORTATION 295 

China and the East Indies developed rapidly, and 
our tonnage registered for foreign trade increased 
from 583,000 tons in 1820 to 758,000 in 1828/ 
Ninety per cent, of our foreign commerce was car- 
ried in our own vessels, and, from this point of 
view, American shipping enjoyed one of the most 
prosperous periods in its history.^ Smuggling was 
extensively carried on in the West Indies, and a 
war of retaliatory legislation in regard to shipping 
characterized the whole decade. 

In 1825 Parhament passed a somewhat obscure 
act which opened the ports on a more liberal system 
of reciprocity. To nations without colonies she of- 
fered the same shipping rights in her colonies which 
such nations gave to England and her possessions. 
The act provided that it must be accepted within a 
year by nations who desired to avail themselves of 
its provisions. President Adams preferred to deal 
with the question by diplomacy, and Congress neg- 
lected to pass the legislation necessary to accept 
the offer. When Gallatin, who had been sent to 
England to treat of this matter, opened his negoti- 
ations in 1826, he was informed that it was too late. 
The stipulated time having elapsed, American ves- 
sels were definitely excluded from the West Indies 
in 1826 by orders in council.' In the campaign of 

• Marvin, American Merchant Marine, chap. ix. 

'Pitkin, Statistical View (ed. of 1835), 363; Soley, "Maritime 
Industries," in Shaler (ed. of 1894), United States, I., 538. 

•Adams, Gallatin, 615-620; cf. MacDonald, Jacksonian De- 
mocracy {Am. Nation, XV.), 201. 



296 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1819 

1828 Adams was blamed for the failure to seize this 
opportunity, but the generally prosperous condition 
of our shipping not only moderated the discontent, 
but even led to a law (May 24, 1828) intended to 
place American vessels in complete control of our 
foreign commerce by providing for the abolition, by 
proclamation of the president, of all discriminating 
duties against such nations as should free ships of the 
United States from corresponding discriminations . In 
the long run, this reciprocity act proved a mistake ; the 
end of Adams's administration marked the beginning 
of a decline in the prosperity of the merchant marine.* 
American commerce during this period by no 
means kept pace with the growing wealth and popu- 
lation of the country.^ As we have seen, the staple 
states produced the lion's share of the domestic ex- 
ports, and the internal exchange favored by the pro- 
tective tariffs restrained the foreign importations. 
Aside from the depression in 182 1, following the 
panic of 1819, and the extraordinary rise in 1825, 
the exports in general exhibited no marked increase 
or decline between 1820 and 1829. Imports showed 
a value of nearly seventy-four and one-half million 
dollars in 1820, ninety millions in 1825, and sixty- 
seven millions in 1829.^ During the whole of Adams 's 

* Soley, in Shaler, United States, I., 540. 

^ Stems, Foreign Trade of the United States, 1820-1840, in 
Jour. Pol. Econ., VIII., 34, 452. 

' Soley, in Shaler, United States, I., 538; cf. Pitkin, Statistical 
View (ed. of 1835), 177; W. C. Ford, in Depevv, One Hundred 
Years of Am. Commerce, I., 23. 



i828] TRANSPORTATION 297 

administration, New York preserved its easy lead in 
domestic exports, although, as the west leaped up to 
power, New Orleans rose rapidly to a close second in 
exports of domestic origin. The southern cities re- 
tained merely the same proportion of the exports of 
domestic origin which they had in 1820, in spite of 
the great increase of cotton production. New York 
and New Orleans gained a large fraction of this trade, 
and Massachusetts changed its proportion of domes- 
tic exports only slightly during the whole decade. 
Over three-fourths of the cotton went to the British 
Isles, while almost all the pork and beef, and two- 
thirds of the flour, went to the West Indies, South 
America, and Great Britain's American colonies.^ 

The statistics of commerce repeat the same story 
of increasing national self-dependence which was told 
by the development of manufactures, internal trade, 
and transportation, and even by the diplomatic 
policy of the United States. The nation was build- 
ing an empire of its own, with sections which took 
the place of kingdoms. The west was already be- 
coming the granary of the whole country. But in 
the development of this "American system," the 
navigating portions of New England and the staple 
states of the south and southwest found themselves 
at a disadvantage. Their interest lay in a free ex- 
change across the ocean. 

Although many minor treaties of commerce and 
navigation were negotiated by Clay during this ad- 

* Pitkin, Statistical View, 1 21-137. 



298 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1825 

ministration, all his other diplomatic efforts met 
with failure, among them attempts to purchase 
Texas and to procure a treaty with England for the 
rendition of fugitive slaves who had escaped to Can- 
ada — strange evidences of the political concessions 
of the northern president. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

REACTION TOWARDS STATE SOVEREIGNTY 

(1816-1829) 

FROM the close of the War of 181 2, an increas- 
ing reaction was in progress in various states 
against the ardent nationalism which characterized 
the country at that time. The assertion of the doc- 
trine of state sovereignty by the Hartford Conven- 
tion in 1814^ so aroused the other sections of the 
country that particularism was for the time dis- 
credited. Leaders of Virginia politics even approved 
a rumor that Madison would march troops against 
New England; Judge Roane, later a champion of 
Virginia's sovereignty, denounced the "anarchical 
principles" of the section.^ In that period, when 
Calhoun and the other leading statesmen of South 
Carolina supported the protective tariff and the 
bonus bill, when Madison, the author of the Vir- 
ginia resolutions of 1798, signed the bill for the re- 
charter of the national bank, when Chief - Justice 
Marshall, a son of Virginia, was welding firm the 
bonds of nationalism in his great series of decisions 

' Babcock, Am. Nationality (Am. Nation, XIII.), chap. xv. 
* Randolph-Macon College, John P. Branch Hist. Papers, II. , i8. 



300 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1819 

limiting the powers of the states and developing the 
doctrine of loose construction of the Constitution/ 
and when New England itself was explaining away 
the particularistic purposes of the Hartford Conven- 
tion, it might well seem that the days of state sov- 
ereignty had come to an end. 

Even then, however, the pendulum was starting to 
swing in the opposite direction. The crisis of 18 19 
and the decisions of the supreme court asserting the 
constitutionality of the national bank under the 
broad national conception of the Constitution, pro- 
duced protests and even resistance from various 
states whose interests were most affected. Ohio in 
18 19 forcibly collected a tax on the branch bank of 
the United States, in defiance of Marshall's decision 
rendered earlier in the year in the case of McCulloch 
vs. Maryland; and in 182 1 her legislature reaffirmed 
the doctrines of the Virginia and Kentucky resolu- 
tions, and passed an act withdrawing the protection 
of the laws of the state from the national bank,^ and 
even persisted in her resistance after the decision 
(Osborn vs. Bank of U. S., 1824) against the state. 
But the proceeds of the tax were ultimately restored: 
Nor was Ohio alone in her opposition to this decision. 
Kentucky was almost equally excited, and Senator 
R. M. Johnson made a vain attempt in 182 1 to pro- 
cure an amendment to the Constitution providing 
that in controversies in which a state was a party 

* Babcock, Am. Nationality (Am. Nation, XIII.), chap, xviii. 

* Ames, State Docs, on Federal Relations, No. 3, p. 5. 



i82i] CONSTITUTIONAL REACTION 301 

the Senate of the United States should have appel- 
late jurisdiction/ Judge Roane, chief-justice of Vir- 
ginia, in a series of papers in the Richmond Enquirer, 
challenging the nationalistic reasoning of the court, 
asserted that the Constitution resulted from a com- 
pact between the states,^ and in this attack he was 
heartily supported by Jefferson.^ Justice Marshall, 
in Cohens vs. Virginia"^ (1821), decided that the su- 
preme court had appellate jurisdiction in a case 
decided by the state court where the Constitution 
and the laws of the United States were involved, even 
though a state was a party. 

Virginia's attorneys maintained, on the contrary, 
that the final construction of the Constitution might 
be given by the courts of every state in the Union ; 
and Judge Roane, whose own decision had been 
overturned, again appealed to his fellow - citizens 
in a strong series of articles. Again Jefferson de- 
nounced the consolidating tendencies of the judi- 
ciary, "which, working like gravity without any 
intermission, is to press us at last into one consoli- 
dated mass." Virginia entered her solemn protest 
against the decision, and her House of Delegates 
reaffirmed the argument of Virginia's counsel, and 

^Annals of Cong., 17 Cong., i Sess., I., 23, 68, 96; Ames, 
State Docs., No. 3, p. 17; Ames, Afnendmcnts to the Const., in Am. 
Hist. Assoc, Report 1896, II., 161; Niles' Register, XVII., 289, 

3". 447- 

^ Randolph-Macon College, John P. Branch Hist. Papers, II., 
106— 121. 

' JefiFerson, Writings (Ford's ed.), X., 140, 189, 229. 

* 6 Wheaton, 26a. 



302 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

asserted that neither the government of the state 
nor of the United States could press the other from 
its sphere. In effect, Virginia's position would have 
given the state a veto on the will of the federal gov- 
ernment, by the protection which her courts could 
have extended to the individual subject to her juris- 
diction under the interpretation placed by the state 
upon the Constitution/ 

The leading expositor of Virginia reaction in this 
period was John Taylor of Caroline, the mover of 
the resolutions of 1798. His Construction Con- 
strued, published in 1820, was introduced by a pref- 
ace in which the editor said : " The period is indeed 
by no means an agreeable one. It borrows new 
gloom from the apathy which seems to run over so 
many of our sister states. The very sound of State 
Rights is scarcely ever heard among them; and by 
many of their eminent politicians is only heard to be 
mocked at." Taylor himself was led to write the 
book by the agitation over the Missouri question 
and the case of McCulloch vs. Maryland. One of its 
purposes was to insist that sovereignty was not di- 
vided between the separate spheres of the state and 
federal government, but rested rather in the people 
of the several states. Two years later, in his Tyr- 
anny Unmasked, Taylor developed the idea that the 



' Randolph-Macon College, John P. Branch Hist. Papers, II., 
28; Jefferson, Writings (Ford's ed.), IX., 184; cf. ibid., X. passim; 
Madison, Writings, III., 217-224; Aines, State Docs, on Federal 
Relations, No. 3, p. 15 ; Nilcs' Register, XX., i iS; 6 Wheaton, 385. 



1823] CONSTITUTIONAL REACTION 303 

division of the power of the people between the 
federal and state governments would be nugatory 
if either Congress or the supreme court could ex- 
clusively determine the boundaries of power between 
the states and the general government. His remedy 
for usurpation was the "state veto," which was to 
be " no mere didactic lecture," but involved the right 
of resisting unconstitutional laws. He met the diffi- 
culty that the people of one state would construe the 
Constitution for the people of all the states, by the 
answer that it was the lesser evil.' Again in 1823, 
in his New Views of the Constitution, he expounded 
the same ideas, and dwelt upon the position of the 
states as the defenders of separate geographical in- 
terests against oppression by the majority of the 
nation. He saw a grave danger in the relinquish- 
ment to Congress of the power to deal with local and 
dissimilar geographical interests by loose-construc- 
tion legislation upon such subjects as banks, roads, 
canals, and manufactures. It would tend to pro- 
duce geographical combinations; sections by com- 
bining would exploit and oppress the minority; 
"Congress would become an assembly of geographi- 
cal envoys from the North, the South, and the West." 
Against these evils, the Constitution, according to his 
view, had provided by confining geographical inter- 
ests within state Hnes instead of "collecting them 
into one intriguing arena." The states, reposing on 
their sovereignty, would interpose a check to oppres- 

' Taylor, Tyranny Unmasked, 258, 262. 

VOL. XIV. — 21 



304 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1822 

sive action and to the combination of sectional 
interests against the minority/ 

Not a theory of government, however, but a poHti- 
cal exigency called out a working principle of state 
rights , When the industrial policy of the government 
fell under the complete control of the north, and the 
social system of the south seemed to be menaced, 
state sovereignty controlled the southern policy. The 
increase in popularity of Clay's American system 
of internal improvements and a protective tariff 
aroused the apprehensions of the whole planting 
section ; the struggle over the admission of Missouri 
taught the south the power of an unfriendly national 
majority; and, in 1822, a threatened insurrection of 
the negroes at Charleston brought home to the whole 
section, and particularly to South Carolina, the dan- 
gers arising from an agitation of the question of 
slavery.^ In the irritated condition and depression 
of this section, the triumph of loose construction 
principles and the possible election of a northern 
president seemed to presage not only the sacrifice of 
their economic interests, but even the freeing of their 
slaves.^ The colonization society, which in its ori- 
gin had been supported by southern men, became 
an object of denunciation by the lower south after 
the Missouri controversy and the insurrection of 



' Taylor, New Views (ed. of 1823), 261 et seq. 
* Cf. Hart, Slavery and Abolition {Am. Nation, XVI.), chap. viii. 
" See the resolutions of Virginia, December 23, i8i6,in Ames, 
State Docs, on Federal Relations, No. 5, p. 3. 



1825] CONSTITUTIONAL REACTION 305 

1822. The opposition was intensified by the dispo- 
sition of the society, towards the close of the period, 
to advocate emancipation, as well as the removal of 
the existing free negroes.* 

In Virginia the doctrine of state rights was sup- 
ported by the friends of Crawford, and, in general, 
by the older portion of the state. In her western 
counties, however, where a movement was in prog- 
ress for a constitutional convention to redistribute 
political power so that the populous interior should 
not be subordinated to the slave-holding minority 
of the coast, there was a strong sentiment in favor 
of the constitutionality and expediency both of fed- 
eral internal improvements and the tariff. Never- 
theless, Virginia's voice was determined by the as- 
cendency of the old-time plantation interests. In 
1825, Jefferson suggested that the legislature of Vir- 
ginia should pass a set of resolutions, declaring the 
internal-improvement laws null and void. He ad- 
vised, however, that, at the same time, the issue 
should be avoided by an act of the Virginia legis- 
lature validating these congressional laws^ until ac- 
tion could be taken on a carefully guarded proposal 
to amend the Constitution so as to grant the right. 
This was the last effort of Jefferson to stay the tide 
of internal improvements which was sweeping oppo- 
sition before it, and even he withdrew his project 

* Cf. Hart, Slavery and Abolition (Am. Nation, XVI.), chap. xtv. 
'Jefferson, Writings (Ford's ed.), X., 348-352; Ames, State 
Docs, on Federal Relations, No. 4, p. 8, 



3o6 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1820 

before it was acted on. His death (July 4, 1826) 
removed from Virginia the most influential advocate 
of state sovereignty and the greatest of the Virginia 
dynasty since Washington. On the same day John 
Adams died. The men who made the declaration 
of independence were passing away, but the spirit of 
that epoch was reviving in the south. 

South Carolina was the theatre of a conflict be- 
tween the old-time forces of nationalism, of which 
Calhoun had been the most prominent exponent, 
and the newer tendencies which would safeguard the 
interests of the commonwealth by appealing to the 
doctrine of state sovereignty.* At first, the con- 
servative party was in the ascendency. In 1820 
the House of Representatives of South Carolina 
passed a resolution which deprecated the system 
of protection as premature and pernicious, but ad- 
mitted that Congress possessed the power of enact- 
ing all laws relating to commerce, and lamented 
the practice "of arraying upon the questions of 
national policy the states as distinct and inde- 
pendent sovereignties in opposition to, or (what is 
much the same thing), with a view to exercise a 
control over the general government";' and, as 
late as 1824, the same body passed resolutions 
declaring that the man "who disseminates doc- 
trines whose tendency is to give an unconstitutional 
preponderance to State, or United States' rights, 

* Houston, Nullification in S. C, chap. iv. 

' Ames, State Docs, on Federal Relations, No. 4, p. 3. 



i826] CONSTITUTIONAL REACTION 307 

must be regarded as inimical to the forms of govern- 
ment under which we have hitherto so happily 
lived"; and that "the People have conferred no 
power upon their state legislature to impugn the 
Acts of the Federal Government or the decisions of 
the Supreme Court of the United States." ' The 
state Senate was already controlled by the opponents 
of national power, led by Judge Smith ; and the next 
year the Lower House also fell under their dom- 
inance. 

The attitude of McDuffie illustrates the transi- 
tional conditions in South Carolina. In 182 1 he 
published a pamphlet supporting a liberal construc- 
tion of the powers of Congress, and refuting the 
"ultra doctrines respecting consolidation and state 
sovereignty." ' In 1824, also, he supported the con- 
stitutionality and expediency of the general survey 
act, and repudiated the idea that the state govern- 
ments were "in any respect more worthy of confi- 
dence than the General Government." ' But he 
opposed the tariff of 1824, and in 1825 he voted 
against specific measures for internal improvement. 
Soon after this he joined the ranks of the advocates 
of state sovereignty, and, together with Hamilton 
and Hayne, so far outstripped the leaders of that 
faction that Judge Smith and his friends found them- 

• Ames, State Docs, on Federal Relations, No. 4, p. 6. 

2 Defense of a Liberal Construction, etc., by " One of the Peo- 
ple." Reprinted in Philadelphia, 1831. To this pamphlet. 
Governor Hamilton had prefixed "an encomiastic advertise- 
ment." * Annals of Cong., 18 Cong., i Sess., 1372, 



3o8 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1821 

selves in a conservative minority against the ultra 
doctrines of their former opponents. 

Doubtless the reversal of South Carolina's atti- 
tude was accelerated by the slavery agitation which 
followed the emancipation proposition of Ohio, al- 
ready mentioned, and by the contest over the negro 
seamen act,^ a measure by which South Carolina, in 
consequence of the plot at Charleston, required that 
free negroes on vessels entering a port of South Caro- 
lina should be imprisoned during the sojourn of the 
ship. The act brought out protests, both from other 
states and from Great Britain, whose subjects were 
imprisoned ; and it was declared unconstitutional by 
Adams's attorney-general and by the federal courts • 
nevertheless, it remained unrepealed and continued 
to be enforced.^ The Senate of South Carolina met 
the situation, at the close of 1824, by resolutions 
affirming that the duty of preventing insurrections 
was " paramount to all laws, all treaties, all constitu- 
tions,'' and protesting against any claims of right 
of the United States to interfere with her domestic 
regulations in respect to the colored population.^ 

Georgia, a few years later (December, 1827), in 
opposition to the Colonization Society,'* vehemently 
asserted her rights, and found the remedy no longer 

* Passed December 21, 1822. See Ames, State Docs, on Fed- 
eral Relations, No. 5, p. 12; cf. Hart, Slavery and Abolition {Am. 
Nation, XVI.), chap. xix. 

* McMaster, United States, V., 200-204, 4i7- 

^ Ames, State Docs, on Federal Relations, No. 5, p. 14. 

* Ibid., 17, 19. 



i828] CONSTITUTIONAL REACTION 309 

in remonstrance, but in "a firm and determined 
union of the people and the states of the south" 
against submission to interference. Already Geor- 
gia had placed herself in the attitude of resistance 
to the general government over the question of the 
Indians within the state. From the beginning of the 
nation, the Indians on the borders of the settled area 
of Georgia were a menace and an obstacle to her 
development. Indeed, they constituted a danger to 
the United States as well : their pretensions to inde- 
pendence and complete sovereignty over their terri- 
tory were at various times utilized by adventurers 
from France, England, and Spain as a means of pro- 
moting the designs of these powers.^ Jackson drove 
a wedge between the Indian confederacies of this 
region by his victories in the War of 18 12 and the 
cessions which followed.^ Although, in 182 1, a large 
belt of territory between the Ocmulgee and Flint 
rivers was ceded by the Creeks to Georgia, the state 
saw with impatience some of the best lands still occu- 
pied by these Indians in the territory lying between 
the Flint and the Chattahoochee. 

The spectacle of a stream of Georgia settlers cross- 
ing this rich Indian area of their own state to settle 
in the lands newly acquired in Alabama and Missis- 
sippi provoked Georgia's wrath, and numerous ur- 
gent calls were made upon the government to carry 

^ Am. Hist. Rev., X., 249. 

2 Babcock, Ant. Nationalitv {Am. Nation, XIII.), chaps, ii., 
xvii. 



3IO RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1825 

out the agreement made in 1802,^ by completing the 
acquisition of these Indian lands. Responding to 
this demand, a treaty was made at Indian Springs in 
February, 1825, by which the Creeks ceded all of 
their lands in Georgia ; but when Adams came to the 
presidency he was confronted with a serious situa- 
tion arising from this treaty. Shortly after it had 
been ratified, Mcintosh, a principal chief of the Lower 
Creeks, who had signed the treaty, contrary to the 
rule of the tribe and in spite of the decision to sell no 
more land, was put to death; and the whole treaty 
was repudiated by the great body of the Creeks, as 
having been procured by fraud and made by a small 
minority of their nation. The difficulty arose from 
the fact that the various villages of these Ind- 
ians were divided into opposing parties : the Upper 
Creeks, living chiefly along the forks of the Alabama, 
on the Tallapoosa and the Coosa in Alabama, con- 
stituting the more numerous branch, were deter- 
mined to yield no more territory, while the principal 
chiefs of the Lower Creeks, who dwelt in western 
Georgia, along the Flint and Chattahoochee branches 
of the Appalachicola, were not unfavorable to re- 
moval. 

When Governor Troup, of Georgia, determined to 
survey the ceded lands, he was notified that the 
president expected Georgia to abandon the survey 
until it could be done consistently with the provisions 

' Phillips, " Georgia and State Rights," in Am. Hist. Assoc, 
Report 1 00 1. II., 34. 



115° 




i826] CONSTITUTIONAL REACTION 311 

of the treaty. Although the treaty had given the 
Creeks until September, 1826, to vacate, Governor 
Troup informed General Gaines, who had been sent 
to preserve peace, that, as there existed "two inde- 
pendent parties to the question, each is permitted to 
decide for itself," and he announced that the line 
would be run and the survey effected. The defiant 
correspondence which now ensued between the gov- 
ernor and the war department doubtless reflected 
the personal hot-headedness of Troup himself, but 
Georgia supported her governor and made his de- 
fiances effective. He plainly threatened civil war 
in case the United States used force to prevent the 
survey.* 

On investigation. President Adams reached the 
conclusion that the treaty was wrongfully secured, 
and gave orders for a new negotiation. This result- 
ed in the treaty of Washington, in January, 1826, 
supplemented by that of March, 1826, by which the 
Creek Indians ceded all of their lands within the 
state except a narrow strip along the western border. 
This treaty abrogated the treaty of Indian Springs 
and it provided that the Indians should remain 
in possession of their lands until January i, 1827. 
Throughout the whole of these proceedings Georgia 
was bitterly incensed. Claiming that the treaty of 
Indian Springs became operative after its ratification, 

'Ames, State Docs, on Federal Relations, No. 3, pp. 25-31; 
Phillips, " Georgia and State Rights," in Am. Hist. Assoc, Re- 
port 1 90 1, IT., 58-60; 40 (map). 



312 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1827 

and that the lands acquired by it were thereby in- 
corporated with Georgia and were under her sov- 
ereignty, the state denied the right of the general 
government to reopen the question. "Georgia," 
said Troup, "is sovereign on her own soil," and he 
entered actively upon the survey of the tract without 
waiting for the date stipulated in the new treaty. 
When the surveyors entered the area not ceded by 
the later treaty, the Indians threatened to use force 
against them, and at the beginning of 1827 another 
heated controversy arose. The president warned 
the governor of Georgia that he should employ, if 
necessary, " all the means under his control to main- 
tain the faith of the nation by carrying the treaty 
into effect." Having done this, he submitted the 
whole matter in a special message to Congress.^ 

"From the first decisive act of hostility," wrote 
Troup to the secretary of war, "you will be con- 
sidered and treated as a public enemy"; and he an- 
nounced his intention to resist any military attack 
on the part of the United States, "the unblushing 
allies of the savages." ^ He thereupon made prep- 
arations for liberating any surveyors who might be 
arrested by the United States, and for calling out 
the militia. In the House of Representatives, a com- 
mittee recommended the purchase of the Indian title 
to all lands in Georgia, and, until such cession were 
procured, the maintenance of the treaty of Wash- 

* February 5,1827. Richardson , Messages and Papers , 1 1 . , 3 7 o . 
2 Harden, Troup, 485. 



1830] CONSTITUTIONAL REACTION 313 

ington by all necessary and constitutional means; 
but the report of the Senate committee, submitted 
by Benton, supported the idea that the ratification 
of the treaty of Indian Springs vested the title 
to the lands in Georgia, and reached the conclusion 
that no preparations should be made to coerce the 
state by military force. In November, 1827, the 
Creeks consented to a treaty extinguishing the last 
of their claims, and the issue was avoided. 

In the mean time, the Cherokees in the north- 
western portion of the state gave rise to a new prob- 
lem by adopting a national constitution (July 26, 
1827) and asserting that they constituted one of the 
sovereign and independent nations of the earth, with 
complete jurisdiction over their own territory to the 
exclusion of the authority of any other state.* This 
bold challenge was met by Georgia in the same spirit 
which guided her policy in regard to the Creek lands. 
The legislature, by an act of December 20, 1828, sub- 
jected all white persons in the Cherokee territory to 
the laws of Georgia, and provided that in 1830 the 
Indians also should be subject to the laws of the 
state. Thus Georgia completed her assertion of sov- 
ereignty over her soil both against the United States 
and the Indians. But this phase of the controversy 
was not settled during the presidency of Adams. 

' Text in Exec. Docs., 23 Cong., 2 Sess., III., No. 91 (Serial No. 
273); Ames, State Docs, on Federal Relations, No. 3, p. 36; see 
also House Reports, 19 Cong., 2 Sess. No. 98, 



CHAPTER XIX 

THE TARIFF OF ABOMINATIONS AND THE 
SOUTH CAROLINA EXPOSITION 

(1827-1828) 

WHILE the slavery agitation was inflaming the 
minds of South Carolina and her sister states 
of the cotton region, and while Georgia, half a fron- 
tier state, was flinging defiance at the general gov- 
ernment when it checked her efforts to complete 
the possession of her territory, the reopening of the 
tariff question brought the matter of state resistance 
to a climax. 

The tariff of 1824 was unsatisfactory to the woollen 
interests. In the course of the decade there had 
been an astonishing increase of woollen factories in 
New England,^ and the strength of the protective 
movement grew correspondingly in that section. By 
a law which took effect at the end of 1824, England 
reduced the duty on wool to a penny a pound, and 
thus had the advantage of a cheap raw material as 
well as low wages, so that the American mills found 
themselves placed at an increasing disadvantage. 
Under the system of ad valorem duties, the English 

* See chap, ii., above. 



i827] TARIFF AND NULLIFICATION 315 

exporters got their goods through the United States 
custom-house by such undervaluation as gravely 
diminished even the protection afforded by the tariff 
of 1824; and the unloading of large quantities of 
woollen goods by auction sales brought a cry of dis- 
tress from New England. This led to an agitation 
to substitute specific duties in place of ad valorem, 
and to apply to woollens the minimum principle al- 
ready applied to cottons. At the same time sheep- 
raisers were demanding increased protection. 

Early in 1827, therefore, Mallory, of Vermont, a 
state which was especially interested in wool-growing, 
brought into the House of Representatives a report 
of the committee on manufactures, proposing a bill 
which provided three minimum points for woollen 
goods : with certain exceptions, those that cost less 
than 40 cents a square yard were to be rated as 
though they cost 40 cents in imposing the tariff; 
those which cost between 40 cents and $2.50 were 
reckoned at $2.50; and those which cost between 
$2.50 and $4, at $4. Upon unmanufactured wool, 
after 1828, a duty of forty per cent, was imposed, and 
all wool costing between 10 and 40 cents a pound 
was to be rated at 40 cents.* 

The political situation exercised a dominant influ- 
ence upon the tariff legislation at this time. As the 
campaign between Adams and Jackson was approach- 
ing its end, the managers of Jackson faced the prob- 
lem of how to hold together the forces of the south, 

* Stanwood, Tariff Controversies, I., 255. 



3i6 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1827 

which were almost to a man opposed to tariff legisla- 
tion, and those of Pennsylvania and New York, where 
protection was so popular, Jackson himself, as we 
have seen, announced his belief in the home-market 
idea, and, although with some reservations, commit- 
ted himself to the support of the protective system. 

While the forces of Jackson were not harmonious 
on the tariff, neither was there consistency of in- 
terests between the friends of protection in New 
England, the middle states, and the west. If New 
England needed an increased tariff to sustain her 
woollen factories, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and parts of 
New York were equally interested in extending the 
protection to wool, the raw material of the New 
England mills. If the New England shipping inter- 
ests demanded cheap cordage, on the other hand, 
the Kentucky planters were ever ready to plead for 
an increased duty upon the hemp which made the 
ropes. If iron foundries were developing among 
the towns of the New England coast, where ships 
brought in the raw material from Sweden and from 
England, the Pennsylvania forges found an opposite 
interest in their desire for an increased duty on pig- 
iron to protect the domestic product. 

The history of the tariff has always been the his- 
tory of the struggle to combine local and opposing 
interests into a single bill. Such conditions fur- 
nished opportunity for the clever politicians who 
guided Jackson's canvass to introduce discordant 
ideas and jealousy between the middle states, the 



i827] TARIFF AND NULLIFICATION 317 

west, and New England. The silence of the New 
England president upon the question of the tariff, 
the "selfishness of New England's policy," and the 
inducements offered to the middle region and the west 
to demand protection for their special interests were 
aU successfully used to break the unity of the tariff 
forces. Even protectionist Pennsylvania, and Ken- 
tucky, home of the champion of the American sys- 
tem, gave a large share of their votes against the 
bill. Although it passed the House (February 10, 
1827), the Senate laid it on the table by the casting- 
vote of Vice-President Calhoun, who was thus com- 
pelled to take the responsibility of defeating the 
measure,^ and to range himself permanently with 
the anti-tariff sentiment of his section. 

Hardly had the wooUens bill met its fate when the 
rival forces began to reorganize for another struggle. 
From the south and from the shipping interests of 
New England came memorials in opposition to the 
tariff and in support of the theory of free-trade.^ At 
a convention which met in Harrisburg, Pennsylva- 
nia, July 30, 1827, a hundred delegates from thirteen 
states met to promote the cause of protection. Find- 
ing it necessary to combine the various interests, 
the convention recommended increased duties both 
upon wool and woollen goods, and the establishment 
of the minimum system. This combination was 

* See the account of Van Buren's tactics at this time, in Stan- 
wood, Tariff Controversies, I., 258; and Calhoun, Works, III.. 47. 
2 Am. State Papers, Finance, V. passim. 



3i8 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1827 

made possible by the proposal of effectively counter- 
balancing the prohibitory duties on wool by such use 
of the minimum device as would give a practical 
monopoly of the American market to the domestic 
manufacturers in the class of goods in which they 
were most interested. To conciliate other sections, 
the convention adopted the plan of an additional 
duty on hammered bar-iron, hemp and flax, and 
various other products.^ 

When the twentieth Congress met, in December, 
1827, Stevenson, of Virginia, defeated the adminis- 
tration candidate, Taylor, of New York, for the 
speakership, and both branches of Congress and the 
important committees were put in the hands of the 
opposition to Adams. Rejecting the plan of the Har- 
risburg Convention, the House committee brought 
in a bill framed to satisfy the producers of raw ma- 
terial, wool, hemp, flax, and iron, and to deny the 
protection desired by New England.^ Protection 
was afforded to raw material even where the pro- 
ducers did not seek it; and in some important cases 
high duties were imposed on raw material not pro- 
duced in this country. The essential point of the 
provision respecting woollens favored by the Har- 
risburg Convention was the fixing of four minimum 
points, but the committee on manufactures inter- 



' Stan wood, Tariff Controversies, I., 264; Niles' Register, 
XXXII., 369, 386. XXXIII.. 187; Elliott, Tariff Controversy, 239. 

2 Taussig, Tariff Hist., 89-92; Dewey , Financial Hist, of the 
U. S., 178-181. 



i828] TARIFF AND NULLIFICATION 319 

posed between the minimum of 50 cents and that of 
$2.50 a minimum of $1, which effectively withdrew 
protection from the woollen goods most largely man- 
ufactured in New England. Moreover, the com- 
mittee refused to establish the increasing rate of 
duty asked for at Harrisburg. 

Calhoun afterwards explained the attitude of the 
southern representatives as follows : * Having before 
them the option of joining New England in securing 
amendments satisfactory to the section, or, by re- 
sisting all amendment, to force New England to 
join with the south in rejecting the bill, which would 
involve Adams in the responsibility for its defeat, 
they chose the latter alternative. Assurances were 
given them by Jackson men that the two tariff inter- 
ests would not be united by mutual concession in the 
last stages of the discussion to insure the passage of 
the bill; and so the south consistently threw its 
weight against the passage of amendments modify- 
ing this designedly high tariff. "We determined," 
said McDuffie later, " to put such ingredients in the 
chalice as would poison the monster, and commend 
it to his own lips." At the same time the Jackson 
men in Pennsylvania, New York, and the west shift- 
ed their votes so as to deprive New England of her 
share in the protective system. When an amend- 
ment was proposed, striking out the duty on molas- 

' Calhoun, Works. III., 49; cf. TLonston, Nullification in S. C, 
34, for similar explanations by Mitchell and McDuffie; Clay, 
Works (Colton's ed.), II., 13; Jenkins, Wright, 53. 

VOL. XtV. 22 



320 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1828 

ses — an article essential to the rum distilleries of New 
England, but obnoxious to the distillers of whiskey 
in Pennsylvania and the west — Pennsylvania and a 
large share of the delegation from Ohio, New York, 
Indiana, and Kentucky voted with most of the 
south against the amendment. On the motion to 
substitute the proposals of the Harrisburg Conven- 
tion with respect to wool and woollens, almost all 
of the delegation of Pennsylvania, and a large por- 
tion of that of New York and Kentucky, as well 
as the members from Indiana and Missouri and the 
south, opposed the proposition. Thus the interests 
of the seaboard protectionists were overcome by 
the alliance between the middle states and the south, 
while the west was divided. 

Bitter as was the pill, it was swallowed by enough 
of the eastern protectionists to carry the act. The 
vote, 105 to 94, by which the measure passed in 
the House ^ (April 22, 1828) showed all of the south 
in opposition, with the exception of certain districts 
in Maryland and the western districts of Virginia, 
while the great area of the states of the Ohio Valley 
and the middle region was almost a unit in favor. 
The lower counties of New York along the Hudson 
revealed their identity with the commercial interests 
by opposing the bill. New England broke in two; 
Vermont, New Hampshire, and Connecticut voted 
almost unanimously in favor of the proposition; 
while Maine cast a unanimous vote in opposition, 

* See map. 



i828] TARIFF AND NULLIFICATION 321 

Rhode Island was divided, and in Massachusetts only- 
two districts — that of the Berkshire wool-growing re- 
gion and the Essex county area — supported the bill. 

In the Senate, an amendment was passed making 
the duty on woollens an ad valorem rate of forty-five 
per cent., but retaining the minima. Various consid- 
erations induced some New England friends of Adams 
to support the measure. Webster defended his action 
in voting for the bill by declaring that New England 
had accepted the protective system as the established 
policy of the government, and after 1824 had built up 
her manufacturing enterprises on that basis. Never- 
theless, in the final vote in the Senate, the five northern 
members who opposed were all from New England. 

Thus the "tariff of abominations," shaped by the 
south for defeat, satisfactory to but a fraction of the 
protectionists, was passed by a vote of 26 to 21 in 
the Senate, May 13, 1828, and was concurred in by 
the House. John Randolph did not greatly overstate 
the case when he declared that " the bill referred to 
manufactures of no sort or kind, but the manufact- 
ure of a President of the United States " ; for, on the 
whole, the friends of Jackson had, on this issue, taken 
sides against the friends of Adams, and in the effort 
to make the latter unpopular had produced a tariff 
which better illustrated sectional jealousies and polit- 
ical intrigues than the economic policy of the nation.^ 

* Register of Debates, 20 Cong., i Sess., IV., pt. ii., 2472; Miles' 
Register, XXV., 55-57, analyzes the votes to show the political 
groupings; cf. Taussig, Tariff History, loi, 102. 



322 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1828 

The tariff agitation of 1827 and the passage of the 
act of 1828 inflamed the south to the point of con- 
flagration. John Randolph's elevation of the stand- 
ard of revolt in 1824 now brought him credit as the 
prophet of the gospel of resistance. " Here is a dis- 
trict of country," he had proclaimed, in his speech 
on the tariff in that year, " extending from the Pa- 
tapsco to the Gulf of Mexico, from the Alleghany to 
the Atlantic ; a district . . . which raises five-sixths 
of all the exports of this country that are of home 
growth. ... I bless God that in this insulted, op- 
pressed and outraged region, we are as to our coun- 
sels in regard to this measure, but as one man. We 
are proscribed and put to the ban ; and if we do not 
feel, and feeling, do not act, we are bastards to those 
fathers who achieved the Revolution." * 

It was South Carolina, rather than Virginia, how- 
ever, that led in violent proposals.^ Dr. Cooper, an 
Englishman, president of South Carolina College, had 
long been engaged in propagating the Manchester 
doctrines of laissez-faire and free-trade, and he was 
greeted with applause when he declared that the 
time had come to calculate the value of the Union. ^ 
Agricultural societies met to protest and to threaten. 
Turnbull, an aggressive and violent writer, in a stir- 
ring series of papers published in 1827, under the 
title of The Crisis, over the signature of Brutus, 

'Annals of Cong., 18 Cong., i Sess., II., 2360. 
2 Houston, Nullification in S. C. 
"Niks' Register, XXXIII., 59. 



i828] TARIFF AND NULLIFICATION 323 

sounded the tocsin of resistance. He repudiated the 
moderation and nationaHsm of " Messrs. Monroe and 
Calhoun," and stood squarely on the doctrine that 
the only safety for the south was in the cultivation 
of sectionalism. " In the Northern, Eastern, Middle, 
and Western States," said he, "the people have no 
fears whatever from the exercise of the implied 
powers of Congress on any subject ; but it is in the 
South alone where uneasiness begins to manifest it- 
self, and a sensitiveness prevails on the subject of 
consolidation." "The more National and the less 
Federal the government becomes, the more certainly 
will the interest of the great majority of the States 
be promoted, but with the same certainty, will 
the interests of the South be depressed and de- 
stroyed." 

On their return from the session of 1828, the 
South Carolina delegation added fuel to the fire. In 
a caucus of the members, held shortly after the pas- 
sage of the tariff, proposals were even made for the 
delegation to vacate their seats in Congress as a pro- 
test, and in this temper they returned to their state. ^ 
McDuffie told his constituents that there was no hope 
of a change of the system in Congress; that the 
southern states, by the law of self-preservation, were 
free to save themselves from utter ruin ; and that the 
government formed for their protection and benefit 
was determined to push every matter to their annihi- 
lation. He recommended that the state should levy 

1 Ntles' Register, XXXV., 184, 202. 



324 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1811 

a tax on the consumption of northern manufactured 
goods, boycott the live-stock of Kentucky, and wear 
homespun ; and he closed by drawing a comparison 
between the wrongs suffered b''" the colonists when 
they revolted from Great Britain and that by which 
the south was now oppressed/ 

Although South Carolina and all of the staple- 
producing section except Louisiana and Kentucky 
were in substantial agreement upon the iniquity of 
the tariff, yet, in respect to the remedy, they were 
widely at variance. Protest had proven ineffective ; 
proposals of resistance by force, plans for a southern 
convention, and threats of disunion were rife.^ 

Such was the situation which confronted Calhoun 
when he returned from Washington and found that 
his section had passed beyond him. The same con- 
siderations that had aroused this storm of opposi- 
tion also had their effect upon him. But he was 
still hopeful that, by the election of Jackson, a 
cotton-planter, the current of northern power might 
be checked ; and he looked forward also to the pros- 
pect that he himself might eventually reach the 
presidential chair. Before him lay the double task 
of uniting himself to his friends in South Carolina, 
lest he lose touch with the forces of his own section, 
and of framing a platform of opposition that should 
be consistent, logical, and defensible; and, at the 
same time, of providing some mode of avoiding the 

'-Niles' Register, XXXIII., 339; cf. ibid., XXXV., 82, 131, 
2 Houston, Nullification in S. C, 49-52, 73-75. 



1828] TARIFF AND NULLIFICATION 325 

forcible revolution that the hotheads of his section 
threatened as an immediate programme. 

It was by the very processes of western growth 
that the seaboard Fouth now found itself a minority 
section and the home of discontent. As the rich 
virgin soil of the Gulf plains opened to cotton culture, 
the output leaped up by bounds. In 18 11 the total 
product was eighty million pounds; in 182 1 it was 
one hundred and seventy-seven millions; in 1826 it 
was three hundred and thirty millions. Prices fell as 
production increased. In 181 6 the average price of 
middling uplands in New York was nearly thirty 
cents, and South Carolina's leaders favored the tariff; 
in 1820 it was seventeen cents, and the south saw 
in the protective system a grievance; in 1824 it was 
fourteen and three-quarters cents, and the South- 
Carolinians denounced the tariff as unconstitutional. 
When the woollens bill was agitated in 1827, cotton 
had fallen to but little more than nine cents, and the 
radicals of the section threatened civil war. 

Moreover, the price of slaves was increased by the 
demands of the new cotton-fields of Alabama, Mis- 
sissippi, and the rest of the southwest, so that the 
Carolina planter had to apply a larger capital to his 
operations, while, at the same time, the cheap and 
unexhausted soil of these new states tended still 
further to hamper the older cotton areas in their 
competition, and the means of transportation from 
the western cotton-fields were better than from those 
of South Carolina. By devoting almost exclusive 



326 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1828 

attention to her great staple, South Carolina had 
made herself dependent on the grain and live-stock 
of the west and the manufactures of the north or of 
England; and, when the one crop from which she 
derived her means of purchasing declined in value, 
the state was plunged in unrelieved distress. Never- 
theless, the planters of the old south saw clearly but 
two of the causes of their distress : the tariff, which 
seemed to them to steal the profits of their crops; 
and internal improvements, by which the proceeds 
of their indirect taxes were expended in the west 
and north. Their indignation was also fanned to a 
fiercer flame by apprehensions over the attitude of 
the north towards slavery. 

In the summer of 1828, Calhoun addressed him- 
self to the statement of these grievances and to the 
formulation of a remedy. After consultation with 
leading men in his home at Fort Hill, he was ready 
to shape a document which, nominally a report of a 
legislative committee (since it was not expedient for 
the vice-president to appear in the matter), put in 
its first systematic form the doctrine of nullification. 
This so-called Exposition,* beginning with the un- 
constitutionality and injustice of protection, devel- 
oped the argument that the tax on imports, amount- 
ing to about twenty-three million dollars, fell, in 
effect, solely on the south, because the northern 
sections recompensed themselves by the increased 
profits afforded to their productions by protection; 

* Calhoun, Works, VI., 1-59. 



i828] TARIFF AND NULLIFICATION 327 

while the south, seeking in the markets of the world 
customers for its staples, and obliged to purchase 
manufactures and supplies in return, was forced to 
pay tribute on this exchange for the benefit of the 
north. " To the growers of cotton, rice, and tobacco, 
it is the same whether the Government takes one- 
third of what they raise, for the liberty of sending the 
other two-thirds abroad, or one-third of the iron, salt, 
sugar, coffee, cloth and other articles they may need 
in exchange for the liberty of bringing them home." 
Estimating the annual average export of domes- 
tic produce at fifty-three million dollars, the Expo- 
sition attributed to the planting section at least 
thirtv-seven million dollars — over two-thirds of the 
total exports; the voting power of this section in 
the House of Representatives was but seventy-six, 
while the rest of the Union had one hundred and 
thirty-seven members. Thus, one-third of the po- 
litical Union exported more than two-thirds of the 
domestic products. Assuming imports to equal ex- 
ports, and the tariff of 1828 to average forty-five 
per cent., the south would pay sixteen million six 
hundred and fifty thousand dollars as its share of 
contributions to the national treasury. Calhoun 
then presented the ominous suggestion that, if the 
staple section had a separate custom-house, it would 
have for its own use a revenue of sixteen million 
six hundred and fifty thousand dollars from foreign 
trade alone, not counting the imports from the north, 
which would bring in millions more. 



328 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1828 

" We are mere consumers," he declared, "the serfs 
of the system — out of whose labor is raised, not only 
the money paid into the Treasury, but the funds out 
of which are drawn the rich rewards of the manu- 
facturer and his associates in interest." 

Taking for granted that the price at which the 
south could afford to cultivate cotton was determined 
by the price at which it received its supplies, he 
argued that, if the crop could be produced at ten 
cents a pound, the removal of the duty would enable 
the planter to produce it at five and one-half cents, 
and thus to drive out competition and to add three 
or four hundred thousand bales annually to the pro- 
duction, with a corresponding increase of profit. 
The complaints of the south were not yet exhausted, 
for the Exposition went on to point out that, in the 
commercial warfare with Europe which protection 
might be expected to engender, the south would be 
deprived of its market and might be forced to change 
its industrial life and compete with the northern 
states in manufactures. The advantages of the north 
would probably insure it an easy victory ; but if not, 
then an attack might be expected on the labor sys- 
tem of the south, in behalf of the white workmen 
of the north. 

W^hat, then, was the remedy? Calhoun found 
this, although in fragmentary form, ready to his 
hand. The reserved rights of the sovereign states 
had long been the theoretical basis of southern re- 
sistance. In the argumentation of such wTiters as 



i828] TARIFF AND NULLIFICATION 329 

Taylor, Titrnbtill, and Judge Roane, not to mention 
Madison and Jefferson in the Virginia and Kentucky 
resolutions, there was material for the system; but 
as yet no one had stated with entire clearness the 
two features which Calhoun made prominent in his 
Exposition. First, he made use of reasoning in 
sharp contrast to that of the statesmen of the days 
of the American Revolution, by rejecting the doc- 
trine of the division of sovereignty between the 
states and the general government/ Clearly differ- 
entiating government from sovereignty, he limited 
the application of the division to the powers of gov- 
ernment, and attributed the sovereignty solely to 
the people of the several states. This conception of 
the unity of sovereignty was combined with the 
designation of the Constitution as articles of com- 
pact between sovereign states, each entitled to deter- 
mine whether or not the general government had 
usurped powers not granted by the Constitution, and 
each entitled peacefully to prevent the operation of 
the disputed law within its own limits, pending a 
decision by the same power that could amend the 
Constitution — namely, three-fourths of the states. 

These doctrines were brought out with definiteness 
and with the deliberate intention of creating from 
them a practical governmental machinery to be 
peacefully applied for the preservation of the rights 
of the states. In effect, therefore, Calhoun, the logi- 
cian of nationalism in the legislation that followed 
* McLaughlin, in Am. Hist. Rev., V., 482, 484. 



330 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1828 

the War of 181 2, became the real architect of the 
system of nulUfication as a plan of action rather than 
a protest. As it left his hands, the system was essen- 
tially a new creation. In the Exposition, the doc- 
trine was sketched only in its larger lines, for it was 
in later documents that he refined and elaborated it. 
It was intended as a substitute for revolution and 
disunion — but it proved to be the basis on which 
was afterwards developed the theory of peaceable 
secession. Calhoun did not publicly avow his au- 
thorship or his adhesion to nullification until three 
years later. 

The rallying of the party of the Union in South 
Carolina against this doctrine, the refusal of Georgia, 
Virginia, and other southern states to accept it as 
the true exposition of the Virginia and Kentucky 
resolutions, the repudiation of it by the planting 
states of the southwest, all belong to the next volume 
of this series. 

Yet the Exposition marks the culmination of the 
process of transformation with which this volume 
has dealt. Beginning with nationalism, the period 
ends with sectionalism. Beginning with unity of 
party and with the almost complete ascendency of 
republicanism of the type of Monroe, it ends with 
sharply distinguished rival parties, as yet unnamed, 
but fully organized, and tending to differ fundament- 
ally on the question of national powers. From the 
days when South-Carolinians led in legislation for 
tariff and internal improvements, when Virginians 



I828J TARIFF AND NULLIFICATION 331 

promoted the Colonization Society, and Georgians 
advocated the policy of mitigating the evils of sla- 
very by scattering the slaves, we have reached the 
period when a united south protests against "the 
American system," and the lower south asserts that 
slavery must not be touched — not even discussed. 

In various southern states the minority counties 
of the coast, raising staples by slave labor, had pro- 
tected their property interests against the free ma- 
jority of farmers in the interior counties by so ap- 
portioning the legislature as to prevent action by 
the majority. Now the same conditions existed for 
the nation. The free majority embraced a great 
zone of states in the north and west ; the south, a 
minority section, was now seeking protection against 
the majority of the Union by the device of state 
sovereignty ; and Calhoun made himself the po- 
litical philosopher of the rights of this minority 
section, applying to the nation the experience of 
South Carolina.* 

Still the great currents of national growth ran on. 
New England was achieving unity and national feel- 
ing as a manufacturing region, and Webster was 
developing those powers which were to make him 
the orator of consolidation. While the leaders of 
the middle states played the game of personal poli- 
tics, their people and those of the growing west 
were rallying around the man who personified their 
passion for democracy and nationalism — the fiery 

• Calhoun. Works, I., 400-405 



332 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1828 

Jackson, who confused sectional opposition to the 
government with personal hostility to himself. This 
frontiersman was little likely to allow political meta- 
physics, or even sectional suffering, to check his will. 
And on the frontier of the northwest, the young 
Lincoln sank his axe deep in the opposing forest. 



CHAPTER XX 
CRITICAL ESSAY ON AUTHORITIES 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL AIDS 

THE authorities characterized in the Critical Essays of 
Babcock's Rise of American Nationality, MacDonald's 
Jacksonian Democracy, and Hart's Slavery and Abolition 
{American Nation, XIII., XV., XVI.), include most of the 
general authorities, and need not be repeated here in detail. 
In addition, account should be taken of several indexes to 
government documents: L. C. Ferrell, Tables . . . and An- 
notated Index (1902); two by J. G. Ames: Finding List 
(1893) and Check List (1895); J. M. Baker, Finding List 
(1900-1901); the Index to the Reports of . . . Committees of 
the House (1887); and Index to Reports of . . . Committees 
of the Senate (1887); Ben Perley Poore, Descriptive Cata- 
logue of Government Publications (1885); L. P. Lane, Aids 
in the Use of Government Publications (American Statistical 
Association, Publications, Nil. (1900), 40-57; L. C. Ferrell, 
" Public Documents of the United States " (Library Journal, 
XXVI., 671); Van Tyne and Leland, Guide to the Archives 
of the Government of the United States in Washington (Car- 
negie Institution, Publications, No. 14, 1904). For bibliog- 
raphy of state official issues, see R. R. Bowker [editor], 
State Publications: a Provisional List of the Official Publica- 
tions of the Several States of the United States from their 
Organization (3 vols., issued 1899- 1905); see also J. N. 
Lamed, Literature of American History (1902), 7-13; and 
I. S. Bradley, in American Historical Association, Report, 
1896, I., 296-319, a bibliography of documentary and news- 
paper material for the Old Northwest. 



334 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1819 

GENERAL SECONDARY WORKS 

The general histories of the period 1819-1829 almost 
without exception extend over earlier or later fields, and 
are described in earlier or later volumes of this series. To 
the usual list, James Schouler, J. B. McMaster, George 
Tucker, H. E. Von Hoist, J. P. Gordy, may be added: S. 
Perkins, Historical Sketches of the United States, from the 
Peace of 1815 to i8jo (1830), the work of a careful contem- 
porary. 

BIOGRAPHIES 

The most serviceable biographies in this period can be 
found through the lists in Channing and Hart, Guide to the 
Study of American History (1896), § 25. The volumes of 
the American Statesmen series are accurate and well written, 
especially Morse's John Quincy Adams, Schurz's Henry Clay, 
Adams's John Randolph, Roosevelt's Thomas H. Benton, 
McLaughlin's Lewis Cass, Shepard's Van Bnren. 

SECTIONAL HISTORY 

Among the bibliographies useful for attacking the mass 
of local and state histories for this period are the following : 
R. R. Bowker, State Publications (New York, 1899, 1902, 
1905); A. P. C. Griffin, Bibliography of Historical Societies 
of the United States (American Historical Association, Re- 
ports, 1890, 1892, 1893). 

New England. — The history of this section, since the 
Revolution, has been neglected, but indications of its im- 
portance appear in Justin Winsor, Memorial History of Bos- 
ton (4 vols., 1880-1882), III., IV., and I. B. Richman, Rhode 
Island: a Study in Separatism (1905). M. Louise Greene, 
The Development of Religions Liberty in Connecticut (1905), 
deals with the toleration movement. The various histori- 
cal societies print documentary material ; but, for the most 
part, New England's activity in this decade must be sought 
in original material, biographies, travels, scattered mono- 
graphs, and, in fragments, in state histories. 



1829] AUTHORITIES 335 

Middle States. — The state and local histories of the 
middle region are more satisfactory on this period, but the 
political life must be sought chiefly in biographies ; and the 
economic and social conditions in the scattered material 
elsewhere cited in this bibliography. J. G. Wilson, Memo- 
rial History of the City of New York (4 vols., 1891-1893); 
and Scharf and Westcott, History of Philadelphia (3 vols., 
1884), are serviceable accounts of the development of the 
great cities of the section. 

The South. — Virginia has been neglected in this period, 
but the travellers afford interesting material; and a good 
view of plantation life is T. C. Johnson, Life attd Letters of 
Robert Lewis Dabney (1903). For North Carolina, the 
literature is cited in S. B. Weeks, Bibliography of the His- 
torical Literature of North Carolina (1895). Two mono- 
graphs by J. S. Bassett, Anti-Slavery Leaders of North 
Carolina (Johns Hopkins University Studies, XVI., No. 6), 
and History of Slavery in North Carolina (ibid., XVII., Nos. 
7, 8), are especially important for the up-country. W. 
E. Dodd, Life of Nathaniel Macon (1903), is useful on this 
period. South Carolina conditions are shown in R. Mills, 
Statistics of South Carolina (1826); and W. A. Schaper, 
Sectionalism and Representation in South Carolina (Amer- 
ican Historical Association, Report, 1900, I.). Georgia is 
depicted in U. B. Phillips, Georgia and State Rights (ibid., 
1901, II.); [G. R. Gilmer], Sketches of Some of the First Set- 
tlers of Upper Georgia (1855); and [A. B. Longstreet], 6^^or- 
gia Scenes (last edition, 1897), the latter made up of rollick- 
ing character-sketches. Among the many travellers useful 
(after criticism) for the South and Southwest may be men- 
tioned, the Duke of Saxe- Weimar, Murat, Paulding, Hodgson, 
and Mrs. Royall. Correspondence illustrating Mississippi 
conditions is printed in J. F. H. Claiborne, Life and Corre- 
spondence of John A. Quitman (2 vols., i860). Two lists by 
T. M. Owen, Bibliography of Alabama (American Historical 
Association, Report, 1897); and Bibliography of Mississippi 
(ibid., 1889, I.), open a wealth of southwestern material. 
For Louisiana, there are various popular histories of New 

VOL. XIV. — 23 



336 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1819 

Orleans; and A. Fortier, History of Louisiana (1904), III.; 
S. D. Smedes, Memorials of a Southern Planter [Thomas 
Dabney], (1887, also 1890), is highly valuable in the de- 
veloped opening of the Gulf area. One of the best pictures 
of southwestern conditions is Lincecum's "Autobiography" 
(so called), in the Mississippi Historical Society, Publica- 
tions, Vin. W. G. Brown, Lower South in American His- 
tory (1902), is illuminative. 

The West. — The material for the West is scattered, the 
general histories of the Mississippi Valley failing to deal ex- 
tensively with settlement. John B. McMaster, History of the 
People of the United States (1883-1900), IV., chap, xxxiii., 
and v., chap, xlv., give good accounts of the westward 
movement. B. A. Hinsdale, Old Northwest (2 vols., 1888, 
1899), is scholarly, but brief on this period. W. H. Vena- 
ble. Beginnings of Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley (1891), 
is important. Of especial value are the travellers, gazet- 
teers, etc., among which the following are exceptionally 
useful: Timothy Flint, Recollections of the Last Ten Years 
(1826) ; Timothy Flint, History and Geography of the Missis- 
sippi Valley (2 vols., 2d edition, 1832) ; four books by J. Hall, 
viz.: Letters from the West (1828), Legends of the West (1833 
and 1869), Notes on the Western States (1838), Statistics of 
the West (1836); Ohio Navigator (1821 and many other edi- 
tions); J. M. Peck, Guide for Emigrants (1831); H. S. Tan- 
ner, View of the Valley of the Mississippi (1834). All of 
these, of course, must be used critically. 

Among the contemporaneous state histories, T. Ford, 
History of Ulinois (1854); J. Reynolds, My Own Times 
(1854-1855, also 1879), though unreliable in detail, have a 
value as material on pioneer conditions. The historical 
societies of the western states abound in old settlers' ac- 
counts. W. C. Howells, Recollections of Life in Ohio (1895), 
is a gem. P. G. Thomson, Bibliography of Ohio (1880), is 
the key to an extensive literature. There is no good his- 
tory of Kentucky in this period; but J. Phelan, History of 
Tennessee (1888), is excellent. Lives of Clay, Jackson, and 
Benton all aid in understanding the region. 



1829] AUTHORITIES 337 

The Far West. — H. M. Chittenden, The American Fur 
Trade of the Far West (3 vols., 1902), is excellent. The 
larger histories of the Pacific states, viz. : H. H. Bancroft, 
Works; Hittell, California; and Lyman, Oregon, are char- 
acterized by Garrison, Westward Expansion (American Na- 
tion, XVII.). The publications of the Oregon Historical 
Society and the Quarterly of the Texas Historical Society 
are extremely useful. D. G. Wooten [editor], Comprehensive 
History of Texas (2 vols., 1899), has material on settlement 
in this period. G. P. Garrison, Texas (1903), is an excellent 
little book. Brief accounts of exploration in this period 
are in E. C. Semple, American History and Hs Geographic 
Conditions (1903); and R. G. Thwaites, Rocky Mountain 
Exploration ( 1 904) . J. Schafer, History of the Pacific North- 
west (1905), and G. W. James, In and about the Old Mis- 
sions of California (1905), are useful brief presentations of 
conditions on the coast. For all this field the H. H. Ban- 
croft library, now the property of the University of Cali- 
fornia, is the great collection of documentary material. 
Illustrative books by contemporaries are: R. H. Dana, 
Two Years before the Mast (1849 and other editions) , giving 
California life; W. Irving, Adventures of Captain Bonne- 
ville (1849), giving Rocky Mountain life; and J. Gregg, 
Commerce of the Prairies; or, the Journal of a Santa Fe 
Trader (2 vols., 1844, also in Thwaites, Early Western Trav- 
els, XIX., XX.). 

HISTORIES OF PARTIES AND POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS 

Charles McCarthy, The Antimasonic Party (American His- 
torical Association, Report, 1902, I.), sets a high standard as 
a monographic party history; C. H. Rammelkamp gives a 
detailed study of the Campaign of 1824 in New York (in 
ibid., 1904, pp. 175-202) ; all of the biographies of the con- 
temporary statesmen deal with the parties of this period; 
and J. D. Hammond, History of Political Parties in the 
State of New York (2 vols., 1852), is a good history by a 
contemporary. U. B. Phillips, Georgia and State Rights 



338 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1819 

(American Historical Association, Report, 1901, H.), gives 
a modern treatment of state politics. 

On political institutions the following are particularly 
useful: Edward Stanwood, History of the Presidency (1898) ; 
M. P. Follett, The Speaker of the House of Representatives 
(1896) ; L. G. McConachie, Congressional Committees (1898) ; 
C. R. Fish, The Civil Service and the Patronage {Harvard 
Historical Studies, XL, 1905); F. W. Dallinger, Nomina- 
tions for Elective Office in the United States {ibid., IV., 1897) ; 
J. B. McMaster, Acquisition of Political, Social, and Indus- 
trial Rights of Man in America (1903). 

PUBLIC DOCUMENTS 

For a list of records of debates, legislative journals, 
documents, statutes, judicial decisions, treaties, and the 
like, see the "Critical Essays" in the neighboring volumes, 
and in Channing and Hart, Guide, § 30. 

WORKS OF AMERICAN STATESMEN 

To the various editions of the works of James Monroe, 
Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, Thomas 
Jefferson, James Madison, Rufus King, described in other 
volumes of this series, may be added John Quincy Adams, 
Memoirs: Comprising Portions of His Diary from 17Q5 to 
1848 (edited by Charles Francis Adams, 12 vols., 1874- 
1877). The diary is unusually full, and abounds in valuable 
material for understanding the politics of the period and the 
character of Adams. He was biased and harsh in his judg- 
ment of contemporaries, but conscientious in his record. 
The Adams papers are now in the private archives of the 
family at Quincy. 

For statesmen of lesser distinction, see W. W. Story, Life 
and Letters of Joseph Story (2 vols., 1851); L. G. Tyler, 
Letters and Times of the Tylers (3 vols., 1884, also 1896). 
A collection of De Witt Clinton's letters was published 
in Harper's Magazine, L., 409, 563, and other letters and 



1629] AUTHORITIES 339 

papers are in the following : David Hosack, Memoir of De 
Witt Clinton (1829); W. C. Campbell, Life and Writings of 
De Witt Clinton (1849); James Renwick, Life of De Witt 
Clinton (1854). There is no collection of Crawford's works; 
he is said to have destroyed his papers; a few letters re- 
main, some of them in the possession of Dr. U. B. Phillips 
(University of Wisconsin). In E. B. Washburne [editor], 
Edwards Papers (1884), and N. W. Edwards, History of Illi- 
nois and Life attd Times of Ninian Edwards (1870), are im- 
portant letters illustrating national as well as western poli- 
tics; see also the letters of Senator Mills of Massachusetts, 
in Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings, ist series, 
XIX., 12-53; and those of Marshall, Kent, Story, and Web- 
ster, in ibid., 2d series, XIV., 320 et seq., 398, 412 etseq. A 
collection of Macon's letters in this decade is in North Caro- 
lina University, /aw^s Sprtint Historical Monographs, No. 2. 
Literary men and journalists are described by Herbert 
B. Adams, Life and Writings of Jared Sparks (2 vols., 1893) ; 
John Binns, Recollections of His Life, Written by Himself 
(1854) ; Amos Kendall, Autobiography (edited by W. Stick- 
ney, 1872), valuable for Dartmouth College life and for Ken- 
tucky in this period; Thurlow Weed, Autobiography (1883), 
useful also for western New York; E. S. Thomas, Reminis- 
cences of the Last Sixty-five Years (2 vols., 1840), editor in 
Charleston, South Carolina, and in Cincinnati; William 
Winston Seaton of the National Intelligencer: a Biographical 
Sketch (187 1 ), contains useful letters by various persons 
from Washington; The John P. Branch Historical Papers 
of Randolph - Macon College, Nos. 2 and 3 (1902, 1903), 
contain some letters and a biography of Thomas Ritchie, 
editor of the Richmond Enquirer. 

AUTOBIOGRAPHIES 

In the group of autobiographies, reminiscences, etc., 
Thomas H. Benton, Thirty Years' View ; or, A History of 
the Working of the American Government, 1820 - 1850 (2 
vols., 1854), is the most important: as a member of the 



340 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1819 

Senate, Benton was active and influential, and, despite 
his positive character, he aims at fairness; Nathan Sargent, 
Public Men and Events [1817-1853], (2 vols., 1875), is made 
up of chatty sketches, with an anti-Jackson bias ; Josiah 
Quincy, Figures of the Past (1901), pen-pictures of men 
of the period; B. F. Perry, Reminiscences of Public Men 
(two series: ist, 1883; 2d, 1889), anecdotal views of South 
Carolinians ; S. G. Goodrich, Recollections of a Lifetime; or, 
Men and Things I Have Seen (2 vols., 1886). 

MANUSCRIPT COLLECTIONS 

Manuscript collections are located in the reports of the 
Historical Manuscripts Commission, published by the Amer- 
ican Historical Association in its annual Reports; and in 
Justin Winsor, Narrative and Critical History of America, 
VI n. (1889). The Library of Congress contains important 
manuscripts of Madison (calendared in Bureau of Rolls and 
Library, Department of State, Bulletin, IV.); of Jefferson 
(ibid., VI., VIII., X.); Monroe (indexed in ibid., II.), and in 
W. C. Ford [editor], Papers of James Monroe (1904); in- 
dexes of the manuscripts of Jackson and Van Buren are in 
progress. In the New York Public Library are collections 
of correspondence of various statesmen of the period (New 
York Public Library, Bulletin, V., 306 et seq.), including 
Monroe (calendared in ibid., V., 316, VII., 210, 247-257); 
Jackson (ibid., IV., 154-162, 188-198, 292-320, V., 316); 
Calhoun (ibid.. III., 324-333); James Barbour (ibid., V., 
316, VI., 22-34). The Clinton Papers are in the State 
Library at Albany, N. Y. (American Historical Associa- 
tion, Report, 1898, p. 578). The papers of Senator Mahlon 
Dickerson, of New Jersey, including letters from impor- 
tant statesmen of the period, are in the possession of Will- 
iam Nelson, corresponding secretary of the New Jersey 
Historical Society. The correspondence of Senator W. P. 
Mangum, of North Carolina, including letters from Clay, 
Webster, etc., is in the possession of Dr. S. B. Weeks, San 
Carlos, Arizona. The papers of Vice-President Tompkins 



1829] AUTHORITIES 341 

in the State Library at Albany are described in Albany 
Institute, Transactions, XL, 223-240. The Plumer papers 
are in the New Hampshire Historical Society. 

PERIODICALS 

The newspapers and periodicals constitute indispensable 
sources. For the former the following catalogues are use- 
ful: Check List of American Newspapers in the Library of 
Congress (1901); Wisconsin Historical Society, Annotated 
Catalogue of Newspaper Files (1899); W. F. Poole [editor], 
Index to Periodical Literature (1853 ^^^ later editions), 
renders the magazines of the period accessible; and W. B. 
Cairns, Development of American Literature from 181 j to 
18 jj, with especial Reference to Periodicals, in University of 
Wisconsin, Bulletin (Literature Series, L, 1898), enumerates 
a list of periodicals not indexed in Poole. Easily first in 
importance among the periodicals useful on the period from 
1819 to 1829 is Niks' Weekly Register, edited by Hezekiah 
Niles (76 vols., 1811-1849), which abounds in material, po- 
litical , social, and economic ; although Niles was a strong pro- 
tectionist, he was also fair-minded and conscientious in col- 
lecting information. The North American Review (Boston, 
begun in 181 5 and still continues) ; The American Quarterly 
Review (Philadelphia, 1827-1837); The Southern Review 
(Charleston, 1828-1832); The American Annual Register 
(New York, 1825-1833). The Quarterly Register and Jour- 
nal of the American Education Society (1829-1843); The 
Methodist Magazine (1818-1840); The Christian Examiner 
(Boston, 1824-1869); and Christian Monthly Spectator 
(1819-1828), are examples of religious and educational pub- 
lications. Among periodicals which contain articles deal- 
ing with the decade, although published later, are The 
Democratic Review, of which the first number appeared in 
1837; Hunt's Merchants' Magazine and Commercial Review 
(first volume, 1839); and D. B. De Bow's Commercial Re- 
view of the South and West (first volume, 1846). Among 
the short-lived magazines of the West are: The Western 



342 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [iSig 

Revieiv (Lexington, 1820-1821); The Western Monthly Re- 
view (edited by Timothy Flint, Cincinnati, 182 7-1 830) ; The 
Illinois Monthly Magazine (edited by James Hall, 1830- 
1831); The Western Monthly Magazine (continuation of 
the former, Cincinnati, 1833-1837). 

GAZETTEERS AND GUIDES 

Among the important sources for understanding the 
growth of the country are various descriptions, gazetters, 
etc. Of the many books of this class may be mentioned 
the following: Emigrants' Guide; or, Pocket Geography of the 
Western States and Territories (Cincinnati, 181 8); William 
Amphlett, Emigrants' Directory of the Western States of North 
America (London, 1819); D. Blowe, Geographical, Commer- 
cial, and Agricultural View of the United States (Liverpool, 
about 1820); John Bristed, Resources of the United States of 
America (New York, 1818); S. R. Brown, The Western 
Gazetteer (Auburn, N. Y., 181 7); J. S. Buckingham, Amer- 
ica, Historical, Statistical, and Descriptive (New York and 
London, 1841); J. S. Buckingham, Eastern and Western 
States (London, 1842); J. S. Buckingham, Slave States 
(London, 1842); William Cobbett, The Emigrant's Guide 
(London, 1830); S. H. Collins, The Emigrant's Guide to and 
Description of the United States of America (Hull, 1830); 
Samuel Cumings, Western Pilot (Cincinnati, 1840); E.Dana, 
Geographical Sketches on the Western Country (Cincinnati, 
1819); William Darby, Emigrants' Guide to Western and 
Southwestern States and Territories (New York, 1818); Will- 
iam Darby, Geographical Description of the State of Louisiana , 
the Southern Part of the State of Mississippi, and Territory 
of Alabama (New York, 1817); Timothy Flint, Co-ndcnscd 
Geography and History of the Western States (2 vols., Cincin- 
nati, 1828); Timothy Flint, History and Geography of the 
Mississippi Valley (2 vols., Cincinnati, 1833); F. Hayward, 
The New England Gazetteer (3d edition, Boston, 1839); D. 
Hewett, The American Traveller (Washington, 1825); Isaac 
Holmes, Art Account of the United States of America (Lon- 



1829] AUTHORITIES 343 

don, 1823); Indiana Gazetteer (2d edition, Indianapolis, 
^^33)' John Kilbourne, Ohio Gazetteer (Columbus, 1819, 
'^^33) \ Wm. Kingdom, Jr., America and the British Colonies 
(London, 1820); W. Lindsay, View oj America (Hawick, 
1824); E. Mackenzie, Historical, Topographical, and De- 
scriptive View of the United States (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 
1 81 9); Joseph Martin, New and Comprehensive Gazetteer of 
Virginia (Charlottesville, 1835); John Melish, A Geographi- 
cal Description of the United States (Philadelphia, 181 6, 
1822, 1826); John Melish, Information and Advice to Emi- 
grants to the United States (Philadelphia, 1819); John 
Melish, The Travellers' Directory through the United States 
(Philadelphia, 1815, 1819, 1822, New York, 1825); Robert 
Mills, Statistics of South Carolina (Charleston, 1826); J. M. 
Veck, A Guide for Emigrants (Boston, 1831, 1837); J, M. 
Peck, New Guide to the West (Cincinnati, 1848) ; J. M. Peck, 
Gazetteer of Illinois (Jacksonville, 1834; Philadelphia, 1837); 
Abiel Sherwood, Gazetteer of the State of Georgia (3d edition, 
Washington, 1837); T. Spofford, Gazetteer of the State of 
New York (New York, 1824); [H. S. Tanner, publisher], 
View of the Valley of the Mississippi (Philadelphia, 1834); 
[H. S. Tanner, publisher]. Geographical, Historical, and 
Statistical View of the Central or Middle United States (Phila- 
delphia, 1 841); D. B. Warden, Statistical, Political, and 
Historical Account of the United States of North America (3 
vols., Edinburgh, 1819.) 

TRAVELS 

The life of this period is illustrated by the reports of 
travellers ; but the reader must remember that the traveller 
carries his prejudices, is prone to find in striking exceptions 
the characteristics of a region, and is exposed to misinfor- 
mation by the natives ; many of these travellers are, never- 
theless, keen observers, well worth attention, and, when 
checked by comparison with others, they are a useful 
source. A full list of the travels bearing on the West and 
South from 1819 to 1829 would take more space than can 



344 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1819 

be allotted here. Bibliographies of travels in the United 
States may be found in Justin Winsor, Narrative and Criti- 
cal History of America (1884-1889), VIII. ,493; Channing 
and Hart, Guide to American History (1896), § 24; W. B. 
'Bryan, Bibliography of the District of Columbia (1900), Ar- 
ticle "America" (Senate Document, 56 Cong., i Sess., No. 
61); P. G. Thomson, Bibliography of Ohio (1880); R. G. 
Thwaites, On the Storied Ohio (1897), App.; H. T. Tucker- 
man, America and Her Commentators (1864) ; B. C. Steiner, 
Descriptions of Maryland (Johns Hopkins University Studies, 
XXII., No. 6.), 608-647. The most important collection of 
travels is R. G. Thwaites [editor], Early Western Travels 
(i 748-1846), to be completed in thirty volumes and an 
analytical index. For an estimate of English travellers, 
see J. B. McMaster, United States, V., chap, xlviii. A list 
of travels in the period 1 820-1 860 will be found in Albert 
Bushnell Hart, Slavery and Abolition (American Nation, 
XVI.), chap. xxii. 

SLAVERY, COTTON, AND THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE 

For works on slavery, see Hart, Slavery and Abolition 
(American Nation, XVI .) , chap. xxii. The general histories, 
such as W. H. Smith, Political History of Slavery (1903), 
and G. W. Williams, History of the Negro Race in America 
(2 vols., 1883), leave much to be desired. Among the most 
important references are the Reports of the American Col- 
onization Society; J. H. T. McPherson, History of Liberia 
(Johns Hopkins University Studies, IX., No. 10.); John S. 
Bassett, Anti- Slavery Leaders of North Carolina (ibid., 
XVI., No. 6); and Slavery in the State of North Carolina 
(ibid., XVII., Nos. 7, 8); H. S. Cooley, Study of Slavery in 
New Jersey (ibid., XIV., Nos. 9, 10); S. B. Weeks, Anti- 
Slavery Sentiment in the South (Southern History Asso- 
ciation, Publications, II., No. 2); S. B. Weeks, Southern 
Quakers and Slavery (1896); William Birney, James G. 
Birney and His Times (1890); W. H. Collins, Domestic 
Slave-Trade (1904); W. E. B. Du Bois, The Suppression of 



1829] AUTHORITIES 345 

the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America 
(Harvard Historical Studies, I., 1896); Mary S. Locke, 
Anti-Slavery in America . . . 16 IQ- 1808 (Radcliffe College 
Monographs, No. 11, 1901); J. P, Dvinn, Indiana, a Re- 
demption from Slavery (1888); N. D. Harris, The History 
of Negro Servitude in Illinois (1904); E. B. Washburne, 
Sketch of Edward Coles, Second Governor of Illinois, and of 
the Slavery Struggle of 182J-4 (1882). The economic his- 
tory of slavery can be written only after much mono- 
graphic work; compare U. B. Phillips, "Economic Cost of 
Slave - Holding in the Cotton Belt," in Political Science 
Quarterly, XX., 267. 

On the history of cotton, see M. B. Hammond, Cotton 
Industry, in American Economic Association, Publications, 
new series, No. i (1897) ; E. Von Halle, Baumwollprodttktion 
(in Schmoller, Staats und Social-wissenschaftliche Forschun- 
gen, XV.); E. G. Donnell, History of Cotton (1872); J. L. 
Watkins, Production and Price of Cotton for One Hundred 
Years (U. S. Department of Agriculture, Division of Statis- 
tics, Miscellaneous Series, Bulletin, No. 9, 1895). 

The best sketch of the Missouri Compromise is J. A. 
Woodbum, The Historical Significance of the Missouri Com- 
promise (American Historical Association, Report, 1893, pp. 
249-298). Source material is in the Annals of Congress ; the 
works of King, Jefferson, Benton, and J. Q. Adams, above- 
mentioned; and also Congressional Globe, 30 Cong., 2 Sess., 
App. ; William and Mary College Quarterly, X. 

STATE SOVEREIGNTY 

On the reaction towards state sovereignty, documentary 
material so well selected as to have the effect of a mono- 
graph is in H. V. Ames, State Documents on Federal Rela- 
tions (1900-1905), Nos. 3-5. The works of John Taylor 
of Caroline are essential, especially Construction Construed 
(1820), Tyranny Unmasked (1822), and New Views of the 
Constitution of the United States (1823); Brutus [R. Turn- 
bull], The Crisis; or. Essays on the Usurpations of the Federal 



346 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1819 

Government (1827), is equally important. Defence of a 
Liberal Construction of the Powers of Congress as regards 
Internal Improvements, etc., with a Complete Refutation of 
the Ultra Doctrines Respecting Consolidation and State 
Sovereignty, Written by George M' Duffle, Esq., in the Year 
182 1 over the Signature "One of the People" (1831), is an 
important pamphlet to mark the extent of the changing 
views of southern leaders. Judge Spencer Roane's an- 
tagonism to Marshall's nationalizing decisions is brought 
out in his articles in Randolph - Macon College, John P. 
Branch Historical Papers, No. 2; see also Jefferson, Writ- 
ings (Ford's edition), X. ; Massachusetts Historical Society, 
Proceedings, 2d series, XIV., 327 (Marshall's strictures on 
Roane) ; and the case of Cohens vs. Virginia, in 6 Wheaton, 
264. Calhoun's "Exposition of 1828" is in his Works, VI., 
1-59. Governor Troup's defiance of the United States is best 
given in E. J, Harden, Life of George M. Troup (1859), con- 
taining many of his letters. T. Cooper, Consolidation, an 
Account of Parties (2d edition, 1830, and in Examiner, II,, 
86, 100), is a South Carolina view. The best monographs 
in this field are David F. Houston, A Critical Study of 
Nidlification in South Carolina {Harvard Historical Studies, 
III., 1893), and U. B. Phillips, Georgia and State Rights 
(American Historical Association, Report, 1901, II.). 

ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL TOPICS 

Commerce and Trade. — For this period, the best com- 
mercial authorities, aside from government documents, are 
Timothy Pitkin, A Statistical View of the Commerce of the 
United States of America (1835), and W. P. Sterns, Foreign 
Trade of the United States, 1820-1840, in Journal of Political 
Economy, VIII, , 34, 452. See also Hazard's United States 
Commercial and Statistical Register (6 vols., 1840-1842); 
Register of Pennsylvania (16 vols., 1828-1835); J. R. 
M'Culloch, A Dictionary, Practical, Theoretical, and His- 
torical, of Commerce and Commercial Navigation (edited by 
Henry Vethake; 2 vols., 1852); John MacGregor, Com- 



1829] AUTHORITIES 347 

mercial Statistics of America: a Digest of Her Productive Re- 
sources, Commercial Legislation, Customs, Tariffs, Shipping, 
Imports and Exports, Monies, Weights, and Measures (Lon- 
don, no date) . On internal trade, see W. F. Switzler. Report 
on Internal Commerce of the United States, Treasury Depart- 
ment, Bureau of Statistics, submitted January 30, 1888, 
pt. ii.. Document No. 1039b; Timothy Flint, History and 
Geography of the Mississippi Valley; and H. S. Tanner 
[publisher]. View of the Valley of the Mississippi, both cited 
above. 

Navigation and Shipping. — See the above and the fol- 
lowing: W. H. Bates, American Navigation: the Political 
History of Its Rise and Ruin, and the Proper Means for Its 
Encouragement (1902); W. L. Marvin, The American Mer- 
chant Marine : Its History and Romance from 1620 to igo2 
(1902); D. A. Wells, Our Merchant Marine : How It Rose, 
Increased, Became Great, Declined, and Decayed (1882). In 
these works there is a tendency to controversy. 

Finance. — The best manual on the financial history of 
the period is Davis R. Dewey, Financial History of the 
United States (1903), clear and judicious, with full bibli- 
ography. The best accounts of banking are: R. C. H. 
Catterall, The Second Bank of the United States (University 
of Chicago, Decennial Publications, 2d series, II., 1903); W. 
G. Sumner, A History of Banking in the United States (in A 
History of Banking in All the Leading Nations, I.), 1896. 

Manufactures. — On the development of manufactures, 
see C. D. Wright, Industrial Evolution of the United States 
(1905); William Bagnall, Textile Industries of the United 
States (1893); J. L. Bishop, A History of American Manu- 
factures from 1608 to i860 (3d edition, 3 vols., 1868) ; S. N. D. 
North, A Century of Wool Manufacture (Association of Wool 
Manufacturers, Bulletin, 1894) ; J. M. Swank, History of the 
Manufacture of Iron (1884, revised 1892); Eleventh Census 
of the United States, Report on Manufacturing Industries 
(1890). American State Papers, Finance, IN.; Secretary of 
the Treasury, Report, 1854-1855 (Executive Documents, 34 
Cong., I Sess., No. 10), 86-92, valuable statistics. 



348 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1819 

The Tariff. — For the history of the tariff in the decade, 
the following are useful: O. L. Elliott, The Tariff Contro- 
versy in the United States, iy8Q-i8jj (Leland Stanford, Jr., 
University, Monographs, History and Economics, No. i, 
1892); Edward Stan wood, American Tariff Controversies in 
the Nineteenth Century (2 vols., 1903) ; F. W. Taussig, Tariff 
History of the United States (1888) ; American State Papers, 
Finance, III. -V., memorials up to 1828; Edward Young, 
Special Report on the Custom,s -Tariff of the United States 
(1872); Committee on Finance, U. S. Senate, The Existing 
Tariff on Imports into the United States, etc., and the Free 
List, together with Comparative Tables of Present and Past 
Tariffs, and Other Statistics Relating Thereto {Senate Reports, 
48 Cong., I Sess., No. 12), cited as Tariff Compilation of 1884. 

Labor. — The labor movement in the period is as yet 
insufficiently studied; but see John B. McMaster, History 
of the People of the United States, V. ; and R. T. Ely, The 
Labor Movement in America (1886; 3d edition, 1890) ; G. E. 
McNeill, The Labor Movement, the Problem of To-Day (1887) ; 
John B. McMaster, Acquisition of the Rights of Man in Amer- 
ica, above mentioned; C. D. Wright, The Industrial Evolu- 
tion of the United States (1895). 

Land. — On the land question, the American State Papers, 
Public Lajtds, are the main reliance. See also Thomas 
Donaldson, The Public Domain: Its History, with Statistics 
(Washington, 1884; also in House Miscellaneous Documents, 
47 Cong., 2 Sess., XIX., 1882-1883); Emerick, The Credit 
System and the Public Domain (Vanderbilt Southern History 
Society, Publications, No. 3, 1899). The actual operation 
of the land system may be studied in the emigrant guides 
and works of travellers previously cited. 

INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS 

General Views. — Upon the internal improvements of 
the United States note the following: [G. Armroyd], Con- 
nected View of the Whole Internal Navigation of the United 
States (Philadelphia, 1826; 2d edition, 1830); G. T. 



1829] AUTHORITIES 349 

Poussin, Travaux d' ameliorations interieurs des Eiats-Unis 
de 1824 a 1831 (Paris, 1836); S. A. Mitchell, Compendium 
of the Internal Improvements of the United States (Philadel- 
phia, 1835) ; Michel Chevalier, Society, Manners, and Politics 
in the United States (Boston, 1839) ; D. Hewett, TPie Ameri- 
can Traveller; or. National Directory Containing an Account 
of all the Great Post-Roads and Most Important Cross-Roads 
in the United States (Washington, 1825). The best estimate 
of the significance of internal improvements in this period 
is G. S. Callender, "Early Transportation and Banking 
Enterprises of the States in Relation to the Growth of 
Corporations," in Quarterly Journal of Economics, XVI I., 
3-54. A useful history of federal internal improvement 
legislation is H. G. Wheeler, History of Congress (1848), II., 
109-513. J. L. Ringwalt, Development of Transportation 
Systems in the United States (1888), a summary but valu- 
able account; H. V. Poor, Sketch of the Rise and Progress 
of Internal Improvements, in his Manual of the Railroads of 
the United States for 1881. 

Official Publications. — Especially significant are: 
Niles' Register, XXXVI., 168, a statement of the amount of 
money expended in each state and territory upon works of 
internal improvement to October i, 1828; J. C. Calhoun's 
report on carrying out the general survey act of 1824, in his 
Works, v., 137-147; the historical survey of the canals of 
the United States, Census of the United States, 1880, IV. In 
the American State Papers, Post-Office, 120, is the Report 
of the Postmaster - General, January, 1825, giving post 
routes, frequency of mails, and cost of transportation. See, 
for statistical data on internal improvements. River and 
Harbor Legislation from IJQO to 188 j (Senate Miscellaneous 
Documents, 49 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 91); and Secretary of the 
Interior, Statement Showing Land Grants Made by Congress 
to Aid in the Construction of Railroads , Wagon Roads, Canals, 
and Internal Improvements , . . . from Records of the General 
Land Office (1888). 

Constitutional Aspects. — For this side of the question, 
see Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the 



350 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1819 

United States (2 vols., sth edition, 1891) ; James Monroe,Vtew 
of the Conduct of the Executive in Foreign Affairs of United 
States, in his Writings, VI., 216-284, and in J. D. Richardson, 
Messages and Public Papers of the Presidents, II., 144-183 
(1899) ; E. C. Nelson, " Presidential Influence on the Policy 
of Internal Improvements," in Iowa Journal of History and 
Politics, IV., 3-69. 

Special Monographs. — Among the more useful are R. 
Mills, Treatise on Inland Navigation (1820); G. W. Ward, 
The Early Development of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal 
Project (Johns Hopkins University Studies, XVII., 431, 
1899); C. C. Weaver, History of Internal Improvements in 
North Carolina Previous to i860 (ibid., XXI., 1903); E. J. 
Benton, The Wabash Trade Route, in the Development of the 
Old Northwest {ibid., XXL, 1903) ; J. S. Young, Political and 
Constitutional Study of the Cumberland Road (University of 
Chicago Press, 1904), is badly arranged, but useful; T. B, 
Searight, Old Pike (Uniontown, Pa., 1894), entertaining; T. 
K. Worthington, Historical Sketch of Finances of Pennsyl- 
vania, in American Economic Association, Publications, II., 
126, gives a good sketch of the internal improvements of 
that state; C. McCarthy, Antimasonic Party, in American 
Historical Association, Report, 1902, chaps, viii.-x., shows 
the political influence of canal schemes in Pennsylvania. 
For Ohio internal improvements, see C. N. Morris, Internal 
Improvements in Ohio, in American Historical Association, 
Papers, III., 107 (1889) ; G. W. Dial, in Ohio Archaeological 
and Historical Society, Publications, XIII., 479; C. P. 
McClelland and C. C. Huntington, History of the Ohio 
Canals; A. B. Hulbert, Historic Highways of America (16 
vols., 1 902-1 905), including IX., Waterways of Westward 
Expansion; X.. The Ohio River and Its Tributaries; XL, 
The Cumberland Road; XII., Pioneer Roads and Experiences 
of Travellers; XIII. , XIV., Great American Canals [Chesa- 
peake and Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Erie], useful, but not 
well digested. 

The best sources for the Erie Canal are Laws of the State 
of New York, in Relation to the Erie and Champlain Canals 



1829] AUTHORITIES 351 

together with the Annual Reports of the Canal Commissioners 
(Albany, 1825), and the succeeding Reports of the Canal 
Commissioners ; View of the Grand Canal (pamphlet, 
Albany, 1825); and the biographies of Clinton by Hosack 
and Renwick above mentioned. 



FOREIGN RELATIONS 

On foreign relations, especially the Monroe Doctrine, 
see C. Seignobos, Political History of Europe since 1814 
(1899), 762, for bibliography of the Holy Alliance. The 
following serve to elucidate British policy: H. W. V. 
Temperley, Life of Canning (1905) ; A. G. Stapleton, Politi- 
cal Life of the Right-Honourable George Canning (3 vols., 
1831); E. J. Stapleton, Some Official Correspondence of 
George Canning (2 vols., 1887); Festing, /. H. Frere and 
His Friends; Memoirs and Correspondence of Viscount 
Castlereagh (8 vols., 1848-1851), VH.; and Richard Rush, 
Memoranda of a Residence at the Court of London [1817- 
1819], (2d edition, 1833), and Memoranda of a Residence at 
the Court of London . . . from 18 ig to 182 j (1845). For 
Spanish America, see F. L. Paxson, Independence of the South 
American Republics (1903), an excellent sketch, with bibli- 
ography; J. H. Latane, Diplomatic Relations of the United 
States and Spanish America (1900); J. M. Callahan, Cuba 
and International Relations (1899). On the genesis of 
Monroe's message announcing the Doctrine, the best survey 
is in the two articles by Worthington C. Ford, John Quincy 
Adams: His Connection with the Monroe Doctrine, in Massa- 
chusetts Historical Society, Proceedings, 2d series, XV. 
(1902), 373-436, and in American Historical Review, VH., 
676-696, and VHI., 28-52. W. F. Reddaway, The Mon- 
•"oe Doctrine (1898; 2d edition, 1906), is a particularly 
lucid and valuable study. Albert Bushnell Hart, Foun- 
dations of American Foreign Policy (1901), chap. vii. ; John 
B. Moore, in Harper's Magazine, CIX., 857; G. Tucker, 
Monroe Doctrine (Boston, 1885); and D. C. Oilman, James 
Monroe (Boston, 1883), are other useful brief accounts. 

VOL. XIV. — 24 



352 RISE OF THE NEW WEST [1819 

See also Frances Wharton [editor], Digest of the Interna- 
tional Law of the United States (3 vols., 1887), I., superseded 
by John B. Moore, Digest (5 vols., 1906). 

On the Panama Congress, considerable material is col- 
lected in The Congress of 1826 at Panama {International 
American Conference, IV., Historical Appendix ,1890). 



INDEX 



Adams.Johk, and Miranda, 201 ; 
death, 306. 

Adams, J. Q, as literary states- 
man, 25; on southern poUti- 
cal genius, 65; and Oregon 
country, 127; poHtical ap- 
prehensions (1820), 147; and 
Missouri struggle, 166, i6g, 
193; on slavery and seces- 
sion, 169; political character 
and record as candidate, 177- 
180, 192-194, 256; plan of 
campaign, 194, 198; suspi- 
cious of Latin America, 204; 
first policy concerning, 204, 
212; and British in Oregon, 
207; and Russian claims, 
208; and Cuba, 210, 282; 
and Monroe Doctrine, 217- 
221 ; and Greek indepen- 
dence, 218; southern support, 
347; strength as candidate, 
249-251; underrates Jack- 
son's strength, 251; and cau- 
cus nomination, 253; and 
international regulation of 
slave-trade, 256; electoral 
vote, 259, 260; and Clay- 
controlled vote in House, 
261; elected president by 
House, 262-264: delicate 
position, 264, 266, 267; and 
corrupt-bargain cry, 267- 
270, 279; non-partisan cabi- 
net, 271; refuses to build 
machine by patronage, 272- 
174; formation of opposi- 



tion, 274; imprudent utter- 
ances on loose construction, 
275-277; alienates south, 
278; believed to favor eman- 
cipation, 279; opposition not 
united, 279; attempt to re- 
strict patronage, 280; and 
Panama Congress, 281-285; 
unionof opposition, 285; and 
internal improvements, 286, 
294; begins Chesapeake and 
Ohio Canal, 291; and West 
Indian trade, 295; and Greor- 
gia - Creek affair, 310-312; 
and tariff of 1828, 317, 319- 
321; diary, 338. 

Agriculture, New England, 14- 
16; southern unification, 56, 
99; southern seaboard de- 
cline, 57-59, 61, 325; west- 
em, 10 1. See also Cotton. 

Alabama admitted, 160. See 
also Southwest, West. 

Alleghany Mountains, influence 
on history, 224. 

Amelia Island affair, 203. 

American Fur Company, activ- 
ity, 113, 120. 

American system. See Inter- 
nal improvements, Tariff. 

Aristocracy, character of Vir- 
ginia, 59-61; of South Caro- 
lina, 63. 

Arkansas, territorial govern- 
ment and slavery, 156. 

Ashley, W. H., and western fur- 
trade, 119-121. 



354 



RISE OF THE NEW WEST 



Astor, J. J., fur-trade, 113; 

Astoria, 117. 
Astoria, career, 117. 
Atkinson, Henry, expedition, 

127. 

Baldwin, Henry, on tariff, 

143- 

Baltimore, as trade centre, 28; 
and internal improvements, 
227, 290, 291; railroad proj- 
ect, 291, 292. 

Bank of United States, specula- 
tion, 136; in panic of 1819, 
136; state opposition, 137- 
140, 300. 

Banks, Kentucky land bank, 
138. 

Barbour, James, speaker, 195; 
favors Adams, 247 ; secretary 
of war, 271. 

Baylies, Francis, on Oregon 
country, 130. 

Becknell, William, Santa Fe 
trade, 124. 

Benton, T. H., champion of far 
west, 131; and Oregon coun- 
try, 131-133; on Texas, 133; 
on jDanic of 1819, 137; and 
public lands, 141, 142, 286; 
and Florida treaty, 192; on 
Georgia - Creek affair, 313; 
bibliography, 334. 

Bibliographies of period 1820- 

1830, 333; of sectional his- 

.tory, 334-33^ y of travels, 344. 

Binns, John, and Adams's re- 
movals, 273. 

Biographies of period 1820- 
1830, 334, 339. 

Birkbeck, Morris, on western 
migration, 79. 

Bolivar, Simon, Spanish Amer- 
ican revolution, 202. 

Bonneville, B. L. E., explora- 
tion, 123. 

Boston and western trade, 228. 

Bridger, James, at Great Salt 
Lake, 121. 



Brooks, John, as partisan, 19. 
Bryce, James, on west, 68, 
Buffalo in 1830, 96. 

Cabinet, Adams's, 271. 

Calhoun, J. C, growing section- 
alism, 7; southern leader, 66; 
and far west, 125; political 
apprehensions (1820), 147; 
and Missouri struggle, 169, 
193; political character and 
record as candidate, 182-185, 
193; candidacy announced, 
(1822), 196; Crawford's op- 
position, 196; system of in- 
ternal improvements, 230; 
congressional canvass, 248; 
vice - presidency, 254, 260; 
defeats woollens bill (1827), 
317; Exposition, 324, 326- 
330; bibliography, 340. 

California, Spanish occupation, 
117; Russians in, 118; 
Smith's expeditions, 121; 
bibliography, 337. 

Canals, effect of Erie, 32-36, 
226; Pennsylvania system, 
38, 288; Chesapeake and 
0^0,289-292; Ohio system, 
292. See also Internal im- 
provements. 

Canning, George, and Cuba, 
210; and Holy Alliance, 212; 
overtures to America, 212- 
214; and French disclaimer, 
214; reception of overtures, 
2 1 5-2 1 7 ; and Monroe Doc- 
trine, 221, 222. 

Canning, Stratford, and claim 
to Oregon, 207. 

Carroll, Charles, and Baltimore 
and Ohio Railroad, 292. 

Cass, Lewis, expedition (1820), 

114. 
Charleston, social character, 63. 
Cherokee Indians, antagonism 

of pioneers, 115; national 

constitution, 313; Georgia's 

encroachments, 31^. 



INDEX 



355 



Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, 
project, 289-291; begun, 291. 

Chicago, in 1830, 96; fort at, 
114. 

Chickasaw Indians, antagonism 
of pioneers, 115. 

Choctaw Indians, antagonism 
of pioneers, 115. 

Cincinnati, in 1830, 97; pork- 
packing, 97, loi; in panic of 
1819, 137. 

Cities, western (1830), 96-98. 
See also cities by name. 

Civil service. New York Council 
of Appointment, 41; four- 
year tenure, 182; Adams re- 
fuses to introduce rotation, 
272; or make removals, 273; 
agitation against presiden- 
tial patronage, 280. 

Clay, Henry, on sectionalism, 7 ; 
on tariff, 144, 238; and Col- 
onization Society, 152; and 
Missouri struggle, 155, 167, 
168, 193; political character 
and record as candidate, 185- 
188, 193; and Jackson's 
Seminole campaign, 190; and 
Florida treaty, 192; and 
Spanish America, 204-206; 
and Greek independence, 
218; and Monroe Doctrine, 
223; on internal improve- 
ments, 234; congressional 
canvass, 248; electoral vote 
(1824), 259, 260; and elec- 
tion in House, 260-262; and 
corrupt-bargain cry, 267- 
270; secretary of state, 269; 
and Panama Congress, 281; 
failures in foreign affairs, 
297; bibliography, 334^ 

Cleveland in 1830, 96. 

Clinton, DeWitt, and Erie 
Canal, 32; as politician, 43; 
presidential hopes, 180; cam- 
paign of 1824, 258; declines 
English mission, 272; bibli- 
ography, 338, 340. 



Coal, Pennsylvania industry, 

36, 38- 

Cobb, T. W., and Missouri 
Compromise, 156; on elec- 
tion of 1824, 255. 

Cochrane, Lord, Spanish Amer- 
ican revolution, 202. 

Cohens vs. Virginia, 301. 

Coles, Edward, and slavery, 

151- 
Colombia, designs on Cuba 

(1825), 282. 

Colonization Society, work,iS2; 
southern denunciation, 304, 
308. 

Commerce, New England ship- 
ping, 12; on Erie Canal, 34; 
development of New York 
City, 35; southern exports, 
47. 327; western transporta- 
tion and travel, 79-82, 99- 
103; development of home 
market, 98, 224, 297; Indian 
fur -trade, 113, 118-123; 
American - Santa Fe, 124; 
American disadvantages in 
West Indian, 294, 295; 
growth of Asiatic, 294; re- 
moval of discriminating du- 
ties, 296; foreign, lags, 296; 
statistics (1820-1829), 296; 
bibliography, 346, 347. See 
also Internal improvements, 
Tariff. 

Congregationalism, loses dom- 
inance in New England, 16- 
19; division and modifica- 
tion, 24. 

Congress, northern dominance 
in House, 154; sectional bal- 
ance in Senate, 154. 

Fifteenth: Missouri, 154- 
150; Spanish America, 205; 
internal improvements, 229. 
Sixteenth: public lands, 85, 
141; loans, 140; retrench- 
ment, 140; tariff, 143-147; 
Missouri, 160-168; Spanish 
America, 206. 



356 



RISE OF THE NEW WEST 



Seventeenth: Oregon coun- 
try, 128-133; ineffective, 
194; internal improvements, 
230-232. 

Eighteenth: Monroe Doc- 
trine, 223; internal improve- 
ments, 232-235; tariff, 236- 
244; nominating caucus, 252- 
254; presidential election, 
260-264. 

Nineteenth: and Adams, 
266, 275, 279, 285; corrupt- 
bargain issue, 267-270, 279; 
executive patronage, 280; 
Panama Congress, 283-285; 
internal improvements, 287, 
288; tariff, 315-317. 

Twentieth: land grants, 
293; foreign trade, 296; tar- 
iff. 318-321. 

Connecticut, clerical influence, 
1 6 ; disestablishment , 18. 
See also New England. 

Constitution, slavery in terri- 
tories, 157; conditional ad- 
mission of states, 158, 159, 
162; internal improvements, 
231, 233; tariff, 240. See 
also State rights. 

Cook, D. P., and election of 
1824, 262. 

Cooper, Thomas, tariff protest, 
322. 

Cotton, effect of gin, 45 ; stimu- 
lus of demand, 45 ; westward 
spread, 46; political and so- 
cial influence, 48, 49, 325; 
crop (1791-1834), 46; ex- 
port ,47,327; spread to south- 
west, 93; bibliography, 345. 

Council of Appointment, New 
York, 41. 

Crawford, W. H., southern 
leader, 66; political charac- 
ter and record as candidate, 
181, 182, 192, 255; ascen- 
dency in House (182 1), 195; 
and Calhoun's candidacy, 
196; and Monroe, 196, 197; 



support and oppositioa, 245^ 
248; stroke of paralysis, 248; 
caucus nomination (1824), 
253; electoral vote, 260; vote 
in House, 263; refuses port- 
folio under Adams, 271; bib- 
liography, 339. 

Creek Indians, antagonism of 
pioneers, 115; menace to 
Georgia, 309; cession (1821), 
309; Indian Springs treaty 
(1825), 310; treaty repudi- 
ated ,310; Georgia's defiance , 
310; claims extinguished , 
311, 313; Georgia- Adams 
controversy, 311-313. 

Cuba, concerns for future (1822, 
1825), 209, 282; movement 
for annexation, 210; mutual 
jealousies of America and 
England, 210, 217. 

Cumberland Road, and west- 
em migration, 81; effect on 
freight rates, 100; Monroe's 
veto (1822), 230-232; na- 
tional repairs, 232; exten- 
sion, 287; project of state 
ownership, 287. 

Davis, Jefferson, migration of 
family, 78. 

Debt, federal, loans (1820, 
1821), 140. 

Democracy, rise, 9; western 
ideals, 107. 

Democratic party, growth in 
New England, 16-20; tenets, 
(1824), 191. See also Elec- 
tions, Politics, and leaders by 
name. 

Detroit in 1830, 96. 

Dickerson, Mahlon, biblio^:- 
raphy, 340. 

"Doughfaces," 165 «. 

Dwight, Timothy, on character 
of pioneers, 20. 

Economic conditions, period of 
readjustment, 4, 5; differen- 



INDEX 



357 



tiation in west, 72; process 
of western settlement, 84-87 ; 
bibliography, 346-348. See 
also Agriculture, Commerce, 
Finances, Internal improve- 
ments. Manufactures, Public 
lands. Tariff. 

Education, advance in New 
England, 26; in middle 
states, 40; western, 107. 

Elections, presidential (1824) 
early preparation, 176; char- 
acter of candidates, 177-191 ; 
possible issues, 191-194, 255- 
257; Adams's plan, 194, 198; 
nomination of Lowndes, 195; 
Calhoun's candidacy an- 
nounced, 196; Crawford's 
intrigues, 196-198; Craw- 
ford's principles and support, 
245; opposition to him, 246; 
southern support of Adams, 
247; Crawford's lead, 248; 
his paralysis, 248; Clay's and 
Calhoun's canvass in House, 
248; Adams's strength, 249- 
251; Jackson's canvass, 251 ; 
his nomination, 252; Clay 
nominated, 252; revolt 
against caucus, 252, 253; 
caucus nominates Crawford, 
253; vice-presidency, 254, 
260; New York campaign, 
257-260; electoral vote, 259, 
260; vote in House, 260-264; 
corrupt - bargain cry, 267- 
271; (1828) use of tariif is- 
sue, 315-317. 319-321. 

■' Era of Good Feeling," reality, 
6, 172, 177, 265. 

Erie Canal, Clinton's expecta- 
tions, 32; effect in western 
New York, ^^i business, 34; 
effect farther west, 34; on 
New York City, 34-36; in- 
fluence on transportation, 
226; bibliography, 350. 

Everett, Edward, as literary 
statesman, 26. 



Exploration of far west, 119- 
123. 

Far west, topography, 11 1; 
Indian trade, 113; forts, 113; 
American influence over Ind- 
ians, 114; beginning of set- 
tlements, 116; fur-trade and 
exploration, 1 18-123; Santa 
Fe trade, 124; routes devel- 
oped, 125; government in- 
terest, 125; government 
expeditions, 126, 127; con- 
sidered uninhabitable, 127; 
bibliography, 337. See also 
California, Oregon, 

Federalist party, decay in New 
England, 16-20; survival 
(1820), 174; attitude, 175. 

Finances, speculation, 135; 
panic of 1819, 136; opposi- 
tion to United States Bank, 
137, 300; replevin and stay 
laws, 138-140; public rev- 
enue, 140; loans, 140; bibli- 
ography, 347. 

Flint, Timothy, as writer, 108. 

Florida treaty, influence on 
Adams's candidacy, 192; and 
recognition of Spanish-Amer- 
ican republics, 204, 205. 

Floyd, John, and Oregon coun- 
try, 128. 

Foreign affairs, policy of isola- 
tion, 199; difficulty in main- 
taining it, 200 ; Clay's failures, 
297; bibliography, 351, 352 
See also Monroe Doctrine, 
Panama Congress. 

Fugitive slaves, attempted Eng- 
lish rendition treaty, 298. 

Fulton, Robert, steamboat mo- 
nopoly, 103. 

Fur-trade, traders reach Pacific 
coast, 112; methods, 113; in 
far west, 1 18-123. 

Gaines, E. P., and Troup, 311. 
Gallatin, Albert, on Jackson in 



358 



RISE OF THE NEW WEST 



Senate, 189; vice-presidential 
candidacy, 254; West Indian 
trade negotiations, 295. 

Galveston pirates, 203. 

Gas, introduction, 40. 

Gazetteers of period 1820-1830, 
342. 

General survey act (18B4), 232- 

235- 

George, Fort, in Oregon coun- 
try, 117. 

Georgia, growth, 57; western 
character, 57; and Indian 
lands, 309-313; defies na- 
tional government, 310-312. 
See also South. 

Germans in southern highlands, 

51- 

Gray, Robert, on the Columbia, 
116. 

Great Britain, and Spanish- 
American revolt, 202, 210- 
215; American West-Indian 
trade, 294, 295. 

Great Salt Lake discovered, 
121. 

Greece, recognition, 218. 

Green Bay, fort at, 114. 

Guides of period, 1820- 1830, 
342. 

Harbor improvement, 232. 

Harrisburg Convention, 317. 

Hartford Convention, influence 
on nationalism, 299. 

Harvard College, Unitarian con- 
trol, 24; liberalization, 26. 

Hayne, R. Y., on decline of 
South Carolina, 64; on tariff 
(1824), 239; on slavery as 
domestic question, 284. 

Hemp, tariff of 1824, 237. 

Holy Alliance, purpose, 211; 
and Spanish America, 212; 
Canning's protest, 214; Rus- 
sian exposition, 216. 

Hudson's Bay Company on 
Pacific coast, 116, 117. 

Hull, James, as writer, 109. 



Illinois, southern settlers, 76; 
and United States Bank, 137 ; 
attempt to introduce slavery, 
150. See also Northwest, 
West. _ 

Imperialism, aspect of national 
growth, 6, 297. 

Imprisonment for debt, reform, 
40. 

Indiana, southern settlers, 76; 
and United States Bank, 137 ; 
attempt to introduce slavery, 
150. See also Northwest, 
West. 

Indians, cessions, 73; extent of 
range (1830), in; trade, 
113, 1 18-123; reduction of 
British influence, 114; reser- 
vation recommended, 115; 
plan to assimilate thwarted, 
115; antagonism of pioneers, 
115; Georgia and Creeks, 
309-313; and Cherokees, 313. 

Internal improvements, Erie 
Canal, 32-36, 226; southern 
attitude, 50, 234, 235, 304; 
state turnpikes, 37, 225; 
western demand, 100, 106; 
and nationalism, 224; nat- 
ural obstacles, 224; Balti- 
more's problem, 227; by 
southern states, 228; by 
New England, 228; national, 
urged, 228; Monroe's atti- 
tude, 228; House resolves 
(18 1 8), 229; Calhoun's re- 
port, 230; National Road bill 
(1822), 230, 231; Monroe's 
veto, 231; national repairs, 
232; harbor act (1823), 232; 
general survey act (1824), 
232-235; Clay's arguments, 
233; as issue (1824), 255; 
Adams's comprehensive pol- 
icy, 276, 286; extension of 
National Road, 287, 288; 
disregard of general system, 
287, 288; popularity, 288; 
state canal systems, 288-293; 



INDEX 



359 



first railroad, 291, 293; land 
grants for state, 293 ; failure 
of plan for national system, 
294; bibliography, 348-351. 

Inventions, cotton-gin, 45. 

Iron, Pennsylvania industry, 
36, 39; tariff (1824), 237. 

Jackson, Andrew, as leader 
of discontent, 148; political 
character and record as can- 
didate, 188-191, 193, 255; 
canvass (1824), 251; nomi- 
nated, 252; senator, 253; 
electoral vote, 260; vote in 
House, 263 ; spreads corrupt- 
bargain cry, 270; resigns 
from Senate, 271; and tariff 
of 1828, 315-317. 321; manu- 
scripts, 340. 

Jefferson, Thomas, financial de- 
cline, 59; and Colonization 
Society, 152; on Missouri 
struggle, 168; on Jackson in 
Senate, 189; on Canning's 
Spanish- American proposals, 
215, 216; favors Crawford's 
candidacy, 245, 246; and 
supreme court, 301; nullifi- 
cation suggestion, 305; death, 
306. 

Johnson, R. M., and appellate 
jurisdiction of supreme court, 
300. 

Judiciary controversy in Ken- 
tucky, 139. See also Su- 
preme court. 

Kelley, Hall, and Oregon 
country, 123. 

Kent, James, and manhood 
suffrage, 176. 

Kentucky, Bank of Common- 
wealth, 138; replevin and 
stay laws, 139; court contro- 
versy, 139. See also South- 
west, West. 

King, Rufus, speech on Mis- 
souri bill, 1 57-161; on effect 



of Compromise, 173; sup- 
ports Adams, 250; minister 
to England, 272; emancipa- 
tion resolution, 277. 
Kremer, George, and corrupt- 
bargain cry, 267, 268. 

Labor, development of class in 
New England, 14; demand 
in west, 85; bibliography, 
348. See also Slavery. 

Lee, Jason, in Oregon, 124. 

Letcher, R. P., and election of 
1824, 262. 

Lewis, W. B., manages Jack- 
son's canvass, 251. 

Liberia established, 152. 

Lincoln, Abraham, migration of 
family, 78. 

Literature, New England move- 
ment, 25; in middle states, 
40; western, 108. 

Live-stock, New England in- 
dustry, 14; western industry, 

lOI. 

Local government in Virginia, 
60. 

Long, S. H. expeditions, 114, 
126. 

Louisiana purchase, treaty and 
slavery, 158. 

Louisville in 1830, 97. 

Lowndes, William, on tariff 
(1820), 145 ; presidential 
nomination, 195; death, 195; 
and internal improvements, 
229. 

Lundy, Benjamin, and Coloni- 
zation Society, 152. 

McDuFFiE, George, and inter- 
nal improvements, 235; and 
tariff (1824), 240; (1828), 
319, 323; state rights evolu- 
tion, 307. 

Mackenzie, Alexander, reaches 
Pacific coast, 116. 

McLane, Louis, and Missouri 
Compromise, 156. 



360 



RISE OF THE NEW WEST 



McLean, John, postmaster-gen- 
eral, 272. 

McLoughlin, John, in Oregon 
country, 117. 

Macon, Nathaniel, as states- 
man, 65; and Adams's pol- 
icy, 278. 

Madison, James, financial de- 
cline, 59; on decay of Vir- 
ginia, 6 1 ; and Canning's 
Spanish- American proposals, 
216. 

Maine, admission, 160, 166. 
See also New England. 

Mallary , R. C. , woollens bill ,315. 

Mangum, W. P., bibliography, 
340. 

Manufactures, development of 
factory system, 4; rise of 
New England, 13; of Penn- 
sylvania, 39. S^^ a/50 Tariff. 

Marshall, John, on appellate 
jurisdiction over states, 301. 

Marshall, Thomas, on decline of 
Virginia, 58. 

Maryland and internal improve- 
ments, 227. See also Balti- 
more, Middle states. 

Massachusetts, Federalist and 
Congregational control, 18. 
See also New England. 

Mercer, C. F., on seaboard de- 
cline, 58. 

Mexico, designs on Cuba (1825), 
282. 

Middle states, transition zone, 
28-30; race elements, 29; 
nationalism; rapid growth, 
30; development of western 
part, 30, 31; industrial de- 
velopment, 31-40; literary 
movement, 40; social ameli- 
oration, 40; isms, 40; politi- 
cal traits, 41-44; and tariff 
(1824), 242, 243; (1828), 
320; bibliography, 335. See 
also states by name. 

Mills, E. H., on Calhoun's char- 
acter, 184. 



Milwaukee in 1830, 96. 

Miranda, Francisco, schemes, 
200, 201. 

Mississippi River, transporta- 
tion route, 102. 

Missouri. See Missouri Com- 
promise, West. 

Missouri Compromise, Missouri 
applies for admission, 154: 
House anti-slavery amend- 
ment, 155, 156; compromise 
line suggested, 156; Senate 
rejects amendment, 156; pop- 
ular agitation, 156; King's 
anti-slavery speech, 1 5 7—160 ; 
Missouri and Maine com- 
bined, 161; compromise in- 
troduced, 161; southern po- 
sition stated, 161 — 164 ; 
combated, 164; compromise 
passed, 164-166; cabinet dis- 
cussion, 166; compromise on 
free negroes, 167; on elec- 
toral vote, 168; significance 
of struggle, 168-170; south- 
ern dissatisfaction, 170, 173; 
effect on southern policy, 
171; as political issue, 172- 
174, 192-194; bibliography, 

345- 

Monroe, James, financial de- 
cline, 59; and Missouri com- 
promise, 164, 166, 170; and 
Crawford's loyalty, 196, 197; 
political neutrality and lack 
of policy, 198; and Spanish 
America, 204, 205, 207, 210; 
message on Monroe Doctrine, 
218-220; and internal im- 
provements, 228; political 
character, 266; manuscripts, 
340. 

Monroe Doctrine, genesis, 199; 
American interest in Span- 
ish-American revolt, 203; 
Adams's first policy, 204, 
212; influence of Florida 
negotiations, 204, 205; Clay's 
advocacy of recognition, 204; 



INDEX 



361 



and of an American system, 
a 06; recognition, 207; ques- 
tion of Pacific claims, 207- 
209; of Cuba, 209-211 ; Holy 
Alliance, 211, 216; England 
and intervention, 212; Can- 
ning's proposal of joint dec- 
laration, 213, 214; Euro- 
pean conference on Spanish 
America, 214; reception of 
Canning's proposal, 215-217; 
Adams presents doctrine, 
216-218; and Greece, 218; 
statement in message, 218- 
220; authorship, 220; recep- 
tion in Europe, 221, 222; at 
home, 223; and Panama Con- 
gress, 283; bibliography, 351. 

National Road. See Cumber- 
land Road. 

Nationalism, outburst, 4—299; 
reaction ,5,300-302; western 
ideal, 109; and internal im- 
provements, 224. See also 
Sectionalism, State rights. 

NegroeSj free, problem, 151; 
Colonization Society, 152, 
304, 308; Missouri Compro- 
mise on, 167; South Carolina 
seamen act, 308. See also 
Slavery. 

New England, provincialism, 
10; political decline, 11; 
population (i 790-1 830), 11; 
shipping industry, 1 2 ; rise of 
manufactures, 13; agricult- 
ure, 14-16; political and 
religious change, 16-20, 24; 
western migration, 20; com- 
munity organization, 21; 
morale, 21, 22; reforming in- 
stinct, 22, 23; literary move- 
ment, 25; education, 26; 
abiding power, 26; state in- 
ternal improvements, 228; 
and tariff (1824), 239, 242, 
243; (1828), 318-321; bibli- 
ography, 334. 



New Orleans, in 1830, q8; as a 
port, 297. 

New York, western growth, 30, 
3 1 ; transportation demand, 
31; effect of Erie Canal, 32- 
36 ; decline of family politics, 
41; Council of Appointment, 
41; political machines and 
leaders, 42-44; campaign 
(1824), 257 — 260. See also 
Middle states. 

New York City, effect of Erie 
Canal, 34-36; chief port, 297. 

Niles, Hezekiah, Register as 
source, 341. 

Nominating caucus, revolt 
against, 252; last (1824), 253. 

Nominating conventions and 
spoils system, 42. 

North, gains control of House, 
154. See also sections and 
states by name. 

Northwest, character of New 
England immigrants, 20-23; 
predominance of southern 
settlers, 75-77; their char- 
acter, 78; overland migra- 
tion, 79, 80; its routes, 80- 
82; its cost, 82; process of 
settlement, 84-86; cost of 
farms, 86 ; skill of pioneer, 87 ; 
his character, 88; waves of 
occupation, 88-90; increase 
of northern settlers, 94; de- 
velopment of home market, 
98; supplies for southwest, 
99; products, 101; and slav- 
ery, 14^151. See also West. 

Nullification, Jefferson's sug- 
gestion, 305; Calhoun's Ex- 
position, 328-330. 

O'Fallon, Benjamin, expedi- 
tion, 127. 

Ohio, southern settlers, 76; and 
United States Bank, 137, 
300; emancipation resolu- 
tion, 277; canal system, 292. 
See also Northwest, West. 



362 



RISE OF THE NEW WEST 



Oregon country, British in, 1 16 ; 
American exploration, ii6; 
Astoria, 117; routes into, 
117,125; British dominance, 
117; American traders visit, 
122; beginning of American 
settlement,! 23 ; joint occupa- 
tion, 127; Spain cedes claim, 
127; discussion in Congress 
(1822), 1 28-133; Britishclaim 
protested, 207; also Russian, 
208; Russian claim delimit- 
ed, 209; bibliography, 337. 

Pacific coast, disputed con- 
trol (1817), 112; fur- traders 
reach, 112; American inter- 
est aroused, 113. See also 
California, Oregon. 

Panama Congress, invitation, 
280; Adams's attitude, 281, 
282; real purpose, 282; dis- 
cussion in Congress, 283-285; 
barren result, 285; bibliog- 
raphy, 352. 

Panic of 18 19, speculation, 135; 
crash, 136; western stay 
laws, 138— 140; effect on pub- 
lic revenue, 140; political 
effect, 147, 148, 191. 

Paper money and panic of 1 8 1 9 , 
136. 

Pennsylvania, western growth, 
36; iron and coal develop- 
ment, 36, 39; transporta- 
tion problem, 36-38, 226, 
288; politics, 38, 44, See 
also Middle states. 

Periodicals of period (1820- 
1830), 341. 

Philadelphia loses trade, 36, 

37- 

Pinkney, William, on Missouri 
bill, 161. 

Pioneers, skill, 87; life, 88. 
See also Northwest, South- 
west, West. 

Pittsburg, growth, 36; iron in- 
dustry, 36, 39; in 1830, 96, 



Polignac, Prince de, and Span- 
ish America, 214. 

Politics, reality of " Era of Good- 
Feeling," 6, 172, 177, 265; 
decline of New England, 11; 
middle - state traits , 41-44; 
development of machine, 42; 
southern genius, 64-66; rise 
of west, 71; western ideals, 
106; influence of panic of 
1 819, 147, 148; threatened 
effect of Missouri struggle, 
172-174; bibliography, 337. 
See also Elections, and lead- 
ers, and parties by name. 

Population, middle states (1820, 
1830), 30; slave (1830), 55; 
west (1820, 1830), 70; United 
States (1820, 1830), 134; free 
and slave states (1820), 154. 

Potomac River, attempt to im- 
prove navigation, 227. 

Prairie du Chien, fort at, 114. 

President, precedent of Mis- 
souri's vote (1820), 168; 
electoral reform agitation in 
New York (1824), 258. See 
also Elections, and presidents 
by name. 

Prices, wheat (1825), 105; cot- 
ton (1816-1827), 325. 

Prison reform, 40. 

Public lands, method of occupy- 
ing, 84; credit system, 84, 
135; new policy (1820), 85, 
141; speculation, 135; as so- 
cial factor, 140; antagonism 
to revenue policy, 141, 286; 
effect of panic of 1819, 141; 
agitation for graduated price, 
142; germs of homestead sys- 
tem, 143; grants for internal 
improvements, 293; bibliog- 
raphy, 348. 

Race elements. New England, 
10, 14; middle states, 29; 
south, 51. 

Railroads, beginning, 291, 292. 



INDEX 



363 



Randolph, John, on seaboard 
decline, 58; as statesman, 
65 ; and slavery in northwest, 
150; and Colonization So- 
ciety, 152; on slavery, 163; 
on "doughfaces," 165 «.; on 
internal improvements, 233; 
on tariff and secession, 241, 
321, 322. 

Readjustment period, 3, 297, 
300—302. 

Reid, R. R., on slavery, 163. 

Religion, influence of New Eng- 
land emigrants, 22, 23, 40; 
character of western, 109. 
See also sects by name. 

Representation, opposition to 
extending slavery, 159. 

Revenue, effect of panic of 
1819, 140. 

Roads, state turnpikes, 37, 
225. See also Ctmiberland 
Road. 

Roane, Spencer, on Hartford 
Convention, 299; attack on 
supreme court, 301. 

Rocky Mountain Fur Company, 
activity, 11 9-1 21. 

Rush, Richard, and Canning's 
Spanish-American proposals, 
213, 214; secretary of treas- 
ury, 271. 

Russia, settlements in Califor- 
nia, 118; tikase on Pacific 
claims, 209; claims delimit- 
ed, 209. 

St. Louis, in 1830, 98; centre of 
fur-trade, 118. 

San Martin, Jos^ de, Spanish- 
American revolution, 202. 

Sanford, Nathan, vice -presi- 
dential vote, 260. 

Santa Fe, American trade, 124. 

Scotch-Irish, in Great Valley, 
29; in southern highlands, 

51- 
Scott, John, and election of 
1824, 263. 



Search, right of, and slave- 
trade, 256. 

Secession , threats over Missouri 
bill, 164. 

Sectionalism, development of 
tendency, 6; combinations 
for control, 6-8; and impe- 
rialism ,297. See also Nation- 
alism, State rights. 

Shipping, New England indus- 
try, 1 2 ; in Asiatic trade, 295 ; 
bibUography, 347. 

Slavery, westward extension 
and politics, 46, 50, 52, 53; 
resuscitated by cotton, 49; 
spread unifies south, 54; ad- 
vance into southwest, 91, 92; 
its modification there, 92; 
attitude of northwest, 149- 
151; argument of mitigation 
by diffusion, 152, 163; issue 
and sectional domination, 
153; slaves as property, 159; 
opposition to further repre- 
sentation, 159; south and 
Ohio's emancipation resolu- 
tion, 277-279; and Panama 
Congress, 284, 285; a "do- 
mestic question," 284; at- 
tempted fugitive rendition 
treaty, 298; and state rights, 
304, bibliography, 344. See 
also Missouri Compromise, 
Negroes. 

Slave-trade, domestic, tendency 
in Virginia, 62; western, 93; 
foreign, reopening involved 
in spread of slavery, 164; in- 
ternational regulation, 256. 

Smith, Jedediah, explorations, 
121. 

Smith, William, on southern 
exports, 48 ; and state rights, 

307- 
Smyth, Alexander, on Oregon 

country, 129. 
Snelling, Fort, 114. 
Social conditions, development 

of labor class, 4, 14; New 



3^4 



RISE OF THE NEW WEST 



England morale, 21 ; isms, 22, 
41 ; amelioration movement, 
40; Virginia aristocracy, 59- 
6 1 ; South Carolina aristocra- 
cy, 63; early northwestern 
life, 85-90; early southwestern 
life, 90-92; western democ- 
racy, 106; rapid growth, 134; 
public lands as factor, 140. 
See also Education, Litera- 
ture, Population, Religion, 
Slavery. 
Sources on period 1820-1830, 
printed documents, 338 ; writ- 
ings of statesmen, 338; au- 
tobiographies, 339; manu- 
scripts, 340; periodicals, 341 ; 
gazetteers and guides, 342; 
travels, 343; on state rights, 

345- 
South, influence of cotton, 45- 

49; resuscitation of slavery, 
49, 50; decline and American 
system, 48, 50, 56, 61-64, 
234. 235, 239-244, 304, 319, 
322, 325; system of minority 
rights, 50, 53, 160, 331; op- 
posing areas, 50; their strug- 
gle for control, 51; effect of 
slavery on this, 52; unifica- 
tion, 54-56; migration of 
free planters, 54; staple-pro- 
ducing region, 56; agricult- 
ural dependence on north, 
56; seaboard decline, 57-59; 
political genius, 64; classes 
of statesmen, 65, 66; reac- 
tion of west on, 69; political 
effect of panic of 1819, 147, 
148; minority in House, bal- 
ance in Senate, 154; and 
Missouri Compromise, 170, 
173; state internal improve- 
ments, 228; and tariff (1824), 
239-244; (1828), 319, 322; 
and Ohio's emancipation res- 
olution (1824), 277; Adams 
alienates, 278; bibliography. 
335. See also states by name . ' 



South Carolina, centre of south- 
ern politics, 50, 66; change 
to state rights leadership, 
66, 306-308; decline and 
political protest, 63, 64; life 
of planters, 63; negro sea- 
men act, 308; tarifif protest 
(1828), 322-324; Calhoun's 
task (1828), 324; Exposition, 
326-330. See also South. 

South Pass discovered, 119. 

Southard, S. L., secretary of 
navy, 271. 

Southwest, growth of cotton 
culture, 46, 93; character of 
early settlers, 77-79, 90; im- 
migration of slave-holding 
planters, 91, 92; character of 
slavery, 92; slave-trade, 93; 
growing southern bias, 94; 
agricultural dependence on 
northwest, 99; and Indians, 
115. See also West. 

Spain, claim on Pacific coast, 
112, 117, 127. 

Spanish America, Miranda's 
plans, 200, 201; revolt, 202; 
British aid, 202; success, 
202; American interest, 203; 
recognition, 207; bibliogra- 
phy, 351. See also Monroe 
Doctrine, Panama Congress. 

Speculation after War of 181 2, 

135. 136. 

State rights, system of mmonty 
rights, 50, 53, 160, 331; Vir- 
ginia's assertion, 301, 305; 
Taylor's exposition, 302-304; 
and slavery, 304; develop- 
ment in South Carolina, 306- 
308; Georgia's defiance of 
national government, 311- 
313; Calhoun's Exposition, 
328-330; states alone sover- 
eign, 329; bibliography ,345. 

States, new, 70; conditional 
admission. 158, 159, 162; 
jurisdiction of supreme court, 
^01. 



IxNDEX 



365 



Stay laws, 138-140. 
Steamboat, influence on west, 

73, 103; monopoly, 103. 
Stevenson, Andrew, speaker, 

318. 
Suffrage, progress of manhood, 

175. 176. . . 

Supreme court, nationalistic at- 
titude attacked, 300; Cohens 
vs. Virginia, appellate juris- 
diction over states, 301. 

Tallmadge, James, and Mis- 
souri Compromise, 155. 

Tariff, southern antagonism, 
48, 50, 61, 63, 304, 322-324; 
western attitude, 106; bill 
(1820), protective measure, 
143; provisions, 144; home 
market argument, 144, 145; 
opposition, 145; distribution 
of vote in House, 145-147; 
fails in Senate, 147; (1824) 
provisions, 236-238; debate, 
238-242; constitutional ques- 
tion, 240-242; distribution 
of vote, 242, 243; compro- 
mise measure, 243; as issue, 
255; unsatisfactory, 314; de- 
mand for specific duties, 315; 
woollens bill (i 82 7) , 3 1 5-3 1 7 ; 
and politics (1827, 1828), 
315-317. 319-321; Harris- 
burg Con vention , 3 1 7 ; (1828) 
provisions, 318; and New 
England interests, 319; vote, 
320, 321; South Carolina Ex- 
position, 326-330; bibliog- 
raphy, 348. 

Taylor, John, on candidates 
(1823), 246; exposition of 
state rights, 302. 

Taylor, J- W., and Missouri 
Compromise, 155, 156; sup- 
ports Adams, 250; speaker, 

275- 
Territories, control of slavery 

^ in. 157- . 

Texas, relinquishment de- 



nounced, 133; Missouri Com- 
promise and relinquishment, 
170; attempts to buy, 298. 

Thomas, J. B., and Missouri 
Compromise, 161. 

Tompkins, D. D., bibliography, 

34°' 

Tracy, A. H., on Oregon coun- 
try, 129. 

Transportation, need in western 
New York, 31; western 
steamboat, 73; western mi- 
gration, 79-82; cost, 82, 99, 
100; Mississippi River, 102. 
See also Internal improve- 
ments. 

Travel, character and routes to 
west, 79-82 ; cost, 82 ; bibliog- 
raphy, 343- 

Treaties, Russian (1824), 209. 

Troup, G. M., and Ohio's eman- 
cipation resolution , 277; and 
Creek lands, 310; defiance of 
national government , 311, 
312. 

Tucker, George, on Oregon coun- 
try, T30. 

Tucker, H. S., on freight 
charges, 100; on Missouri 
Compromise, 173. 

Tudor, William, on New Eng- 
land morale, 22. 

Tumbull, R. J., and resistance 
to tariff, 322, 

Tuyl, Baron, and Russian 
claims, 209. 

Tyler, John, on slavery, 163. 

Unitarianism, rise, 18, 24. 
Universalism, rise, 24. 

Van Buren, Martin, as poli- 
tician, 43; and election of 
1824, 250, 257, 264; and 
Panama Congress, 285; and 
internal improvements, 287; 
bibliography, 340. 

Vancou\-er, George, voyage, 
116, 



366 



RISE OF THE NEW WEST 



Vancouver, Fort, 117. 

Vetoes, Monroe's National Road 
(1822), 231. 

Virginia, loses political domi- 
nance, 50, 65; seaboard de- 
cline, 57-59, 61; plantation 
life, 59; local government, 
60; land poor, 61; and do- 
mestic slave-trade, 62; and 
Missouri Compromise, 173; 
internal improvements, 228; 
and supreme court, 301 ; and 
American system, 305. See 
also South. 

Walker, Joseph, route to Cali- 
fornia, 123. 

Walla- Walla, Fort, 117. 

War of 1812, readjustment af- 
ter, 3-5. 

Webster, Daniel, on effect of 
peace, 5; on decline of New 
England, 12; on political 
squabbles, 19; as literary- 
statesman, 25; and man- 
hood suffrage, 176 ; and 
Greek independence, 218; 
and tariff (1824), 239; (1828), 

West, significance of nse, 67; 
conditions of development 
and ideals, 68, 72, 106; reac- 
tion on east, 69; growth, 70; 
voting power, 7 1 ; homoge- 
neity (181 5), 71; industrial 
differentiation, 72, 94; social 
imity, 72; Indian cessions, 
73; effect of steam naviga- 
tion, 73, 103; occupied areas 
(1810-1830), 74, 75; section- 



al zones, 94; cities (1830), 
96-98; overland transporta- 
tion charges, 99, 100; de- 
mand for internal improve- 
ments, 100, 106, 228; Missis- 
sippi transp ortation , 102, 
105; spirit, 103-105; decline 
of agricultural prices, 105; 
demand for protection, 106; 
education, 107; literature, 
108; religion, 109; national- 
ism, 109; and panic of 1819, 
147, 148; replevin and stay 
laws, 138-140; and tariff 
(1824), 238, 242, 243; (1828), 
320; bibliography, 336. See 
also Far west. Northwest, 
Pacific coast. Southwest. 

West Indies, American trade, 
294. 

Wheat, prices in west (1825), 
105. 

Wheeling m 1830, gy. 

Whitman, Marcus, in Oregon, 
124. 

Whitney, Eli, cotton-gin, 45. 

Wilson, J. L., and Ohio's eman- 
cipation resolution, 277. 

Wirt, William, on Calhoun, 
185; attorney-general, 271. 

Wool and woollens, tariff of 
1824, 236; demand for more 
protection, 314; Mallary's 
bill, 315-317; tariff of 1828, 
318, 321. 

Wyeth, Nathaniel, Oregon ex- 
peditions, 123. 

Yellowstone River expedi- 
tions, 126, 127. 



END OF VOL. XIV. 



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